I completely missed this:
It seems to me that the phrase, “the guy that we get out of the hood,” is an implied racial reference. It refers specifically to blacks, though one could say the officer meant to refer only to young black men from the ghetto who, in the officer’s view, are prone to commit crimes.
Either way, it’s still race-specific in a case that otherwise has no obvious racial dimension. To shame Craig into telling the truth, the officer could have used a different example, like, “I expect this from some punk we get off the street.” Or, “I expect this from some low-life, but not a Senator.” It’s also fairly clear from the context that the officer is not associating blacks with bathroom cruising, but with dishonesty and “disrespect” toward the police.
Why would Karsnia use a race-specific reference in this context? First, the officer may associate blacks in general, or at least those from “the hood,” with bad conduct. In the heat of the exchange, this particular example is the one that first comes to his mind because black men from poor neighborhoods are the kind of people he would most associate with dishonesty and disrespectful behavior.
Second, the officer may have expected that Craig would immediately understand the reference and be especially shamed by it as a law-abiding white person. “Not only were you engaged in this tawdry behavior but now you’re acting like a black thug who lies to a police officer about it,” he seems to be saying. I doubt the officer would have used the “hood” reference if he’d been talking to a suspect who was black. It simply wouldn’t have worked against a black suspect, whether that suspect was from “the hood” or not. It would have backfired even if used against, say, a wealthy black lawyer in a business suit. Further, in the presence of a black person the officer would have been sensitized to using a racial reference. It only works as a shaming technique if it’s one white person speaking to another, with no blacks around to object.
I can see how that could easily be interpreted as a racist comment, but when I heard it, I thought nothing of it. I remember my drill sergeants and NCO’s (white, black, hispanic, and other) in the army referring to “back in the hood” or “back on the block” (‘You might be able to get away with that back in the hood’ or ‘We do things differently here than back on the block’, etc.) almost interchangeably, and there was no racism in their statements when they made them, so I paid no attention to his remark when I heard it.
Interesting, though.
myiq2xu
I posted about that a couple days ago on another site. I was wondering if I was the only person who notice the implicit racial reference.
Pb
I don’t think “the guy that we get out of the hood” is necessarily racial as much as it is classist; what if he had said, say, “ghetto trash” (and spare me the faux accusations of anti-semitism, I’m not talking about the Warsaw ghetto…)? But while we’re talking about race, what race would you expect to find in a Minnesota ghetto or ‘hood? Vietnamese?
What I found much more interesting was this interchange:
Yep, that about sums it up. Who are you going to believe, a Republican Senator, or your own lying eyes?
Nikki
Is there a reason that Karsnia’s actions need to be scrutinized?
John Cole
Not really, I just thought it was interesting that many people saw race in those remarks, and I didn’t. That means that I am either not very sensitive on issues regarding race, or, am so used to allegedly racist remarks that when I hear them I don’t notice them, or, as it is becoming increasingly clear after learning there is a whole bathroom subculture, completely oblivious. Maybe some other options, too.
In other words, I didn’t see anything to the remarks, and am interested other people did.
ThymeZone
Look John, you are talking about a cop who sits for long periods of time in a crapper hoping to snare a queer.
In a situation where any ordinary person, approached in the same way, would only have had to say, “Not interested, please go away” and the incident would have ended. Instead, his being there is in order to create an arrest, a criminal charge, a record, and embarassment for some gay guy.
That’s his job. That’s what he thinks is a service to the people of Minnesota. Arresting people for being gay. What kind of guy do we think this is? A progressive social worker? He’s a fucking authoritarian. Of the very stripe of people who have been running the country until just recently. How do we expect them to talk?
The board loves to bash Larry Craig for being an asshole (thereby making it okay to victimize him in this way). But this cop is just doing exactly what Larry Craig would have him do. He’s Larry Craig’s cop. Of course he looks down his nose at other people.
David Schraub
Interesting example, given the huge Hmong population in the Twin Cities area :-).
But yes, I think it was an implied racial reference–though I doubt the cop meant it consciously. It’s more illustrative of a general social milieu than of any particular mindset of the officer.
Face
Fuckin christ. Here we go again.
ThymeZone
What’s your problem?
ThymeZone
What’s up with this thing ringing up my posts twice?
I guess my Vista machine is too antiquated for the software here?
Pb
I’ve identified your problem! :)
ThymeZone
Heh.
Rome Again
With all the white people who listen to black rap music these days, I think the term ‘hood is becoming common slang and I personally don’t see it as a racist remark. Perhaps it is, but I would need more to go on to consider it such personally.
Dennis-SGMM
Thymezone, the copper staked out crapper because the PD had received complaints about people having sex there. According to another blog, that particular restroom was the place to go for the traveler wanting a quickie. I’d guess that as far as Karsnia was concerned, Craig could have fellated guys until his skull imploded as long as he wasn’t doing it in a public place.
All in all, I’d say that the cop was far less racist or homophobic than Craig’s Republican colleagues in the Senate.
ThymeZone
Do you have some facts for that? The story i saw referred to “gay cruising” which neither states nor implies any sex taking place.
I’ve been asking for several days for facts to back up any claim that actual sex in restrooms is any kind of significant problem anywhere. Still haven’t seen one item of support for the idea. Fifty plus years of elminating waste in mens rooms coast to coast, never seen a sex act.
Have you? Do you know people who are seeing them? Where, and when?
Do you suppose that arrests are the most effective, or even remotely cost effective, way to reduce gay cruising in a restroom? Wouldn’t a $14 an hour attendant be able to scare off gay cruising and (a) without making arrests or (b) with the ability to provide other services, such as maintenance, at the same time?
I have never been in or heard of anyone being in a situation that required police protection from gays in a restroom, have you?
The Other Steve
Doesn’t sound racial to me, and I agree with Pb, I was more surprised by the “Embarrassing, embarrassing. No wonder why we’re going down the tubes.” comment and why nobody picked up on that.
rachel
? Hmong≠Viet
The Other Steve
I already posted a link to a local article which mentioned they’d been running a sting there and had arrested 41 people. You of course ignored it, because it didn’t fit the way you wanted the story to be. Whatever.
Others have posted links pointing out that word of the arrests had been spreading on forums which reviewed bathrooms for this public sex trolling.
Dennis-SGMM
One of the early news items referred to the police having received complaints about lewd conduct in the restroom. Sorry, but I can’t find a link for you.
I work with cops and, at least in the department I know, they don’t devote resources to something just for the heck of it. All it would take is for one father to bring his son to that restroom while while sex was happening for a complaint to be generated. That they made a cop, who could clearly be doing other things, spend his shift sitting in a restroom suggests that there were numerous complaints.
Sure, a restroom attendant would likely keep down the cruising – just as a filling station attendant would relieve senior citizens from having to fill their tanks in the (here) 105 degree heat. But here in today’s America throwing people out of work so that we can save money is the norm and it will be until the last barrista sells the last latte to the last insurance salesman.
Lastly, no I’ve never heard of anyone needing police protection from gays but I’m still a little squeamish about sex in public places. If it’s worth doing it’s worth getting a room to do it in.
myiq2xu
It’s in the police report.
JGabriel
It’s possible the officer had military training, like JC’s, and simply regurgitated it in the heat of the moment, with more thought towards creating the dynamic of a drill seargeant dressing down a recruit, rather than any racial connotation.
I don’t want to dismiss Carpenter’s analysis, but I don’t want to read to much into the officer’s use of the phrase ‘hood’ either.
Still, it does undercut, a little bit, the officer’s claim of “I’m a professional.”
If he had used ‘hood’ when dressing down a black suspect, it would have betrayed, at best, an insensity to the word’s racial connotations. In the context of addressing a white Senator, though? Kind of hard to determine whether the context was racial, military, or just local jargon.
Maybe someone from Minneapolis will stop by and explain whether it has a more general usage locally, just to put that part of the speculation to bed.
Face
You’re about to hijack the thread by being completely correct, while everyone else is completely wrong, and the next 50 posts will be spent by you belittling everyone who offers links to evidence of our not-wrongness.
Have fun with dat.
Stu
This is soo hot…
Oh wait, no it isn’t.. it’s dumb
myiq2xu
Ignore the troll/sockpuppet. He/she/it is not here to engage in rational discourse, but is only here to “spoof” and play games using various “personas.” The one you were responding to is only one of the fake identities.
He/she/it is just desperate for attention.
Rome Again
I offered you proof against your allegations of sockpuppetry last night myiq2xu. If you don’t want to investigate the proof I offered then admit your laziness, but don’t accuse me and TZ of sockpuppetry when we are two completely different individuals. Get a clue.
Want some help?
TZ and I started our close friendship here yet, you can go back and research and see that we were both posting (me always as Rome Again, TZ previously as ppGaz) since the Terri Schiavo situation when we both happened to follow a link (or possibly two separate links) here from Kos because we both heard John Cole was getting pissed at his Republican party.
Note: we’re not sure if we followed the same link or two different links but we both discovered Balloon Juice at about the same time (The Schiavo fiasco) from the same source (Kos). We both participated on Balloon-Juice for roughly two years before we began our friendship, during which time we interacted pretty rarely.
The Other Steve
I’m close… southwestern suburbs.
It’s not in general usage, except perhaps on the north side, which is the bad part of town. That being said, I don’t know what experience this LEO had. If he was with Minneapolis PD, then he’d have been exposed to a lot more. Minneapolis has had a history off and on over the past 20 years of gang activity.
Even so, I think it was used to shame the Senator. You get the impression from the last comment, that the officer knew in general who he was talking to.
cpl
To quote “The Princess Bride”: I do no tthink that words means what you think it means.
The result of more than 15 years of marketing hip-hop is white kids in white neighborhoods routinely and un-selfconciously refering to the places where they live as “the hood.”
To declare a statement to be racist based on the use of the term “the hood” is to fundamentally misunderstand where our kids have been growing up all these years.
MBunge
Hasn’t it been true for decades that crime rates have been higher among African-Americans than among generic white folk or other ethnic/racial groups? You can argue about the reasons for that (poverty, racism, cultural decay), but isn’t it common for big-city cops to deal with a disproportionately high number of black suspects and perpetrators? How does that affect the “racist” undertone of the cop’s remark?
Mike
capelza
cpl, very good point. My kid talks like that as do all his pals. He learned the hard way that “ho” and “bitch” are welcome in this house, but the lingo is spread into towns and small rural areas without any blacks kids at all.
myiq2xu, TZ (PPgaz), crochety old coot that he may be at times ;) , is most certainly NOT a sock puppet. I can’t imagine where anyone got that idea. I too came here about the same time he did. Rome again, as well..a completely different person.
David Schraub
I know, but it still struck me, given that the reason (I assume) Vietnam was used as the example is “who do you expect to be in the Twin Cities, some tropical southeast Asian ethnic group? How absurd!”, and of course there is a southeast Asian ethnic group that is very much a part of the Twin Cities community.
Rome Again
Actually, that was my point yesterday as well.
Also:
Ty capelza, I appreciate the help. Although, TZ is not old IMO, and he has cute ankles. :)
capelza
Rome Again…yes, TZ has shapely ankles, worthy of Praxiteles. I don’t think he’s old either, but he sure has been crochey the past few days!
Good grief rereading my words in the quote, I left out a very important NOT there…”ho” and “bitch” (as used in lingo anywhere, I confess to using bitch in other ways) are NOT welcome. And nothing weirder than a bunch of Oregon rural white kids calling each other “my nigger”. That last one is wrong on so many levels, but they say it nonetheless.
Pb
David Schraub,
You assumed wrong, stop doing it.
Rome Again
He’s just frustrated with nanny state Dems. I can understand that, personally.
I knew what you meant. No biggie.
demimondian
myiq2xu…
TZ a sockpuppet? Hee hee hee.
No, TZ’s no sockpuppet. He’s actually quite a decent guy, for a concern troll. He and I go back to before Schiavo here.
demimondian
Hey! I resemble that remark.
And I assure you that we’re every bit as tired of you self-serving idiolibertarians as you think you are of us. The difference is that we’re honest about wanting social services and public benefits, and about paying for them.
Jess
Does the term “trailer trash” immediately bring to mind a certain racial demographic? I think so, whether or not it’s accurate. Ditto for a “guy from the hood”; the “hood” is the inner city, which in depressed areas tends to be noticeably “browner” (not just black) than suburban areas. I believer this is true of Minneapolis (based on what people have told me), and this was probably what the cop had in mind in his attempt to shame Craig.
Mike, this is a less simple equation than it appears. Certainly blacks are arrested at somewhat higher rates than whites, but there is a lot of debate as to whether they actually commit more crime. I’m sure you’ve heard that small amounts of crack cocaine bring harsher penalties than larger amounts of powder cocaine. Street crime is also much easier and cheaper to prosecute than white collar crime. The only groups that clearly commit significantly more crime than the average population are young men of all races, and corporations.
liberal
ThymeZone wrote,
Some guy I knew in grad school saw a couple guys doing the nasty in a stall.
A college acquaintance who attended a different grad school than I complained about one of the b’rooms being “the pickup bathroom.”
And some freak tried to pick me up in the b’room once. I guess I happened to shit in the designated pickup stall or something.
Of course, I guess some hookups in the can might actually be consumated in more sanitary surroundings.
Dreggas
I dunno but here in so-cal if you don’t live in the ‘burbs, and even in some cases if you do, you live in the hood. Of course I call where I live the ghetto since, well, it’s pretty damn ghetto now anyway. I think in this case, as in many others, people looking for something to get uppity about will find it, especially people who see racism around every corner and under every rock.
Kynn
Pb asked:
But while we’re talking about race, what race would you expect to find in a Minnesota ghetto or ‘hood? Vietnamese?
I don’t know about “hoods” per se, but here are the demographics for Minneapolis:
65.2% White
16.6% African American
10.6% Hispanic or Latino
5.8% Asian
1.3% Native American
0.1% Pacific Islander
Let’s not assume that the area is devoid of people of color. More than 1/3 of the local population is non-white.