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Here's an interesting article on what it's like to be black in crappy neighborhoods in Charlotte, NC:

A tall white police officer got out of his car and ordered me toward him. Two other police officers, a white woman and a black man, stood outside of their cars nearby. I complied. Without so much as a question, the officer shoved my face down on the sheet metal and cuffed me so tightly that my fingertips tingled.

"They're on too tight!" I protested.

"They're not meant for comfort," he replied.

The police officer had not asked my name or my business before grabbing my wrists, jerking my hands high behind my back and slamming my head into the hood of his cruiser.

The reporter from the NY Times tries to fight back:

"You have no right to put your hands on me! This is America," I said angrily, in that moment supremely unconcerned about whether this was standard police procedure or a useful law enforcement tool or whatever anybody else wanted to call it. "I have a right to talk to anyone I like, wherever I like."

The police in Charlotte beg to differ:

The female officer trumped my naive soliloquy, though: "Sir, this is the South. We have different laws down here."

Only in America!

Of course that area is a high-crime district (gang violence is a major problem down there), and when you read the entire article, you'll see the context in which that altercation went down. But here's the difference:

"Man, you know what would have happened to one of us if we talked to them that way?" said one disbelieving man as he walked away from me and my blank notebook. "We'd be in jail right now."

That's the difference. In that part of America, the idea of "innocent until proven guilty" is turned upside down. There are plenty of normal, law-abiding black citizens in that neighborhood, but according to the article, if you dress like a gang member your considered guilty by association.

Read the entire article. It's powerful...

I heard this reporter on NPR a few days ago. It is an amazingly sad commentary on THE GREATEST NATION THE WORLD HAS EVER SEEN!!!

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