How Being Raised In The Ghetto Colors Perceptions Of Law Enforcement

August 5, 2013

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There’s been a lot of angry rhetoric about whether race enters into the raising of children, specifically, how African-Americans should tell their children to act around white people, and law enforcement officials.

Since so many of these are anecdotal, I thought to add my experience to the cacophony.

My family lived in a working class, poor neighborhood in southern California. It was also very Hispanic, and as far as we knew, mostly Mexican. One of my best friends was Arabic, but he looked Hispanic, and we didn’t really know what being Arabic meant, so it didn’t matter to anyone except our parents couldn’t talk to his in Spanish (and therefore, not at all).

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I often heard stories about racist cops and racist white people doing racist things to my Mexican relatives and friends. Even at that early age, I was somewhat skeptical — it seemed to me that in many of these stories, I could see how people instigated and escalated…