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rinueIn my anectodal personal experience, I'm a white person (a pale and small female white person, and someone bland enough looking I can work as a film extra when I want to) and I get hassled by cops when I'm in majority white places in the U.S. but not when I'm in racially diverse places in the U.S. There doesn't have to be a dramatic cultural difference; when I lived in the Dallas area, if I was on foot in a majority white neighborhood police were going to stop and ask me what I was up to, and if I was on foot in a majority hispanic neighborhood police were going to slow down, look at me, and then keep driving.
This holds true in my experience outside of Texas, and I've been more likely to get hassled outside of Texas because I've been in more majority-white places outside of Texas. I just think Texas provides a particularly clear example because I could lay two extremely similar towns or neighborhoods side by side, where the police forces draw from the same employment pool.
People who want to express their authority are going to go after somebody, just like rapists are going to go after somebody and bullies are going to go after somebody. If there's a black person around, they "win" and get to be the person to hassle. But once you've filtered out black people and hispanic people, eventually you get to a point where I'm the weirdest seeming one (whether because I read as slightly queer, or because I'm out of work at an unusual time of day, or because I pause to look at something nobody else paused to look at) and I get hassled and ordered around for no reason by loud-voiced armed people a foot taller and two feet wider than me.
This holds true in my experience outside of Texas, and I've been more likely to get hassled outside of Texas because I've been in more majority-white places outside of Texas. I just think Texas provides a particularly clear example because I could lay two extremely similar towns or neighborhoods side by side, where the police forces draw from the same employment pool.
People who want to express their authority are going to go after somebody, just like rapists are going to go after somebody and bullies are going to go after somebody. If there's a black person around, they "win" and get to be the person to hassle. But once you've filtered out black people and hispanic people, eventually you get to a point where I'm the weirdest seeming one (whether because I read as slightly queer, or because I'm out of work at an unusual time of day, or because I pause to look at something nobody else paused to look at) and I get hassled and ordered around for no reason by loud-voiced armed people a foot taller and two feet wider than me.
