The worst racism rooted in undeniable reality Susan Estrich Susan Estrich is a nationally syndicated columnist.
“They don’t know that you teach at Harvard when you’re at Fenway Park,” my friend Harry Edwards used to say about living in Boston in the late ’70s. Back then, Boston did more than its share to earn a bad reputation among black professionals. Today, Massachusetts has an African-American governor. The Celtics no longer go out of their way to make sure they have white players. Black fans try as hard as everyone else to find a ticket to Fenway. And every black I know, male or female, will tell you that black men are treated differently by the police than white men every day of the week. Why wouldn’t they be? Police departments look very different than they did 20 or 30 years ago, more like the communities they police. You see more women and more minorities, and far more emphasis on community involvement, community policing and building trust. All of that is definitely better. Tensions have been reduced. Police can do their jobs better as part of the community than from the outside looking in. But none of that matters very much so long as three-quarters of the inmates are black and Hispanic men. Assume you’re a police officer and you get a report of a possible break-in, you go to the house and find an angry black man. It might be his house. It might not be. Probably he won’t kill you. Probably. .............>>>>................>>>>.....................................http://www.dailygazette.net/De.....r00503&AppName=1
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