It doesn't matter if you're black or white

[Aresen]

The former Rachel Dolezal, now Nkechi Diallo, is facing felony theft/ welfare fraud charges for collecting food stamps while claiming a monthly income of only $500 in child support -- without mentioning the $84,000 she made in two years, between sales of her book, sales of her art, and speaking engagements.

http://www.khq.com/story/38272892/first ... fare-fraud

I am sure the DSM-5 has a name for this, but I'll go with 'con artist.'

Incompetent con artist.

I have this -- um, friend -- who worked for tips in college and did not necessarily report every last dollar on her taxes. But she did make sure to claim enough to cover actual trackable expenses plus whatever she put in the fucking bank. She never tried claiming any welfare benefits, either.

I'll agree with 'incompetent', but I think there has to be a special kind of self-delusion - akin to that of a congressman taking envelopes of cash in bribes or the gay-bashing preacher boffing the altar boys - that leads people like Rachel Dolezal to imagine they will not be caught.

[Jennifer]

The former Rachel Dolezal, now Nkechi Diallo, is facing felony theft/ welfare fraud charges for collecting food stamps while claiming a monthly income of only $500 in child support -- without mentioning the $84,000 she made in two years, between sales of her book, sales of her art, and speaking engagements.

http://www.khq.com/story/38272892/first ... fare-fraud

I am sure the DSM-5 has a name for this, but I'll go with 'con artist.'

Incompetent con artist.

I have this -- um, friend -- who worked for tips in college and did not necessarily report every last dollar on her taxes. But she did make sure to claim enough to cover actual trackable expenses plus whatever she put in the fucking bank. She never tried claiming any welfare benefits, either.

I'll agree with 'incompetent', but I think there has to be a special kind of self-delusion - akin to that of a congressman taking envelopes of cash in bribes or the gay-bashing preacher boffing the altar boys - that leads people like Rachel Dolezal to imagine they will not be caught.

Yeah. Did you read the story? One of her welfare caseworkers first got suspicious upon discovering she'd published a book (through a real publishing house, not a self-publish thing) because he or she knew book contracts typically include advances in the low-five-figures range. She was getting national media attention for this, she deposited money in a bank account under her real name -- and she thought she would get away with this?

[D.A. Ridgely]

I know at least a half dozen black comics who are probably writing jokes about this already.

[Jennifer]

I wonder if she'll identify as white or black for her trial?

[Aresen]

I wonder if she'll identify as white or black for her trial?

I'm kinda hoping she takes the 'Sovereign Citizen' route.

[D.A. Ridgely]

I wonder if she'll identify as white or black for her trial?

That's the least of her problems. She better figure out how she's going to identify in prison.

[Jennifer]

I wonder if she'll identify as white or black for her trial?

That's the least of her problems. She better figure out how she's going to identify in prison.

If she goes on trial as a blonde white woman she has a better chance of avoiding prison.

[thoreau]

https://www.theonion.com/judge-rules-wh ... 1819594949

[Warren]

https://www.theonion.com/judge-rules-wh ... 1819594949

*chills*

[nicole]

So there's a thing going on lately where large groups of minor teenagers (usually 50-200 or so teens) take the CTA from the South Side to the Magnificent Mile, run outside, and mob any of a handful of businesses around Chicago Ave and Michigan Ave as well as the beach (and they run as a large group across the expressway to get to the beach). They don't seem to do a huge amount of damage to the businesses but they do beat people sometimes as well as screaming at people and scaring all the suburbanites and stuff, and of course it's very dangerous for them to run across LSD.

So the approach the cops have started taking to this is to "direct" the kids back to the CTA, "directing" them onto trains that will then run express back to the South Side. Unsurprisingly, it makes a lot of people uncomfortable that the response is kind of like "we're going to send you back to where you belong" as if they're not allowed to be downtown. Something definitely feels uncomfortable about that to me, but also these kids are fucking shit up. When they get back down to 31st St they basically just take the mayhem there. This article outlines how after getting shipped back down, they mobbed the beach there, got that beach shut down, and then did some more running across thoroughfares and beating random people they came across.

Such tactics are preferable to making mass arrests, but they still raise red flags, particularly because the teens involved were all black, said Craig Futterman, a University of Chicago law professor who works on civil rights and police accountability issues. “It’s just as common, at least in my experience, that you have white teenagers engaging in similar behavior. … Do we have a similar response?” he said. “I don’t know what ‘borderline criminal’ means. It is or it isn’t.”

The police strategy may make a certain kind of sense in isolation, but against the backdrop of the city’s long history of discriminatory police tactics, it becomes more troubling, he said. “(Police should not) pick on or single out groups on the basis of race for selective treatment or discriminatory treatment. That’s a problem.”

Just as common to have...white teenagers going downtown in groups of 100-200 to beat people? To shoot off guns at the beach late at night on Memorial Day weekend and possibly drive a whole crowd of people to run across an expressway? I mean...yeah, that's just not happening.

The (black) aldermen on the South Side are saying they wish the cops downtown were arresting these kids, because sending them back home just means they take up police resources there instead.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/loca ... story.html

[JasonL]

Oh man that lights up the tribal alarms across the board. "Roaming gangs" and "thugs" and "youth groups (hurhur)" are all things the superwhite law and order conservatives live in constant fear of. The argument has historically been "yeah roaming gangs are not a that really happen in your neighborhoods" or "4 dudes is not a roaming gang" or "protestors or larger groups who aren't hurting people aren't a bunch of thugs you made that up." If you have actual minority dominant groups in the hundreds who actually are hurting people, that's bad and there's no great culturally acceptable way to deal with it.

[thoreau]

I have heard tales of roaming gangs of black kids beating people up in Midwestern cities for several years, but every time I've heard these tales I've also heard debunkings. So I don't know what to think here.

[JasonL]

Right. It's always been BS. If there's a case where it's not the right will go nuts.

[nicole]

Well, you're not going to hear a debunking of this one, I promise you that.

[Andrew]

I suppose unleashing dogs on them and using firehoses on them would be bad optics.

[Aresen]

I suppose unleashing dogs on them and using firehoses on them would be bad optics.

There are other methods:

[Ellie]

I saw a sticker on a street sign today that said "MAKE RACISTS AFRAID AGAIN." Um ... were they ever afraid to start with? More than they are now? I don't remember this period of history.

[Eric the .5b]

I saw a sticker on a street sign today that said "MAKE RACISTS AFRAID AGAIN." Um ... were they ever afraid to start with? More than they are now? I don't remember this period of history.

Well, we saw the explosion of assholes who thought Trump's election meant they could be open about their racism. Presumably, they were reluctant to pull that before late 2016.

[lunchstealer]

I saw a sticker on a street sign today that said "MAKE RACISTS AFRAID AGAIN." Um ... were they ever afraid to start with? More than they are now? I don't remember this period of history.

Well, we saw the explosion of assholes who thought Trump's election meant they could be open about their racism. Presumably, they were reluctant to pull that before late 2016.

Mid-2015 but otherwise cosign.

[JasonL]

It's not afraid per se. More like ashamed to say things out loud because your expectation is everyone around you will think you are a retarded hillbilly. While I do think the oh no racism rules the country narrative is considerably overblown, a fair take has to observe that the coalition willing to accept certain expressions is larger than many people in the middle to right ever expected.

[Ellie]

I watch a lot of British mysteries and murder shows, because of course I do, with the occasional modern Doctor Who thrown in. A few years ago I noticed appreciatively that there were often couples with one black person and one white person, which I feel like you rarely see on American TV. But lately I've noticed that when a British show has a black character, they're ALWAYS married to a white person, or if they're younger, they have a white parent. Showing a relationship between two black people is practically nonexistent. I'm curious what contributes to the difference between the two. (Or maybe it's all bad data and confirmation bias on my part, I dunno.)

[Eric the .5b]

I watch a lot of British mysteries and murder shows, because of course I do, with the occasional modern Doctor Who thrown in. A few years ago I noticed appreciatively that there were often couples with one black person and one white person, which I feel like you rarely see on American TV. But lately I've noticed that when a British show has a black character, they're ALWAYS married to a white person, or if they're younger, they have a white parent. Showing a relationship between two black people is practically nonexistent. I'm curious what contributes to the difference between the two. (Or maybe it's all bad data and confirmation bias on my part, I dunno.)

I've seen so relatively little of British TV that the only mixed couple I can think of is Rose and Mickey from Doctor Who. Chef had a black leading couple...and that's all I got.

The Rivers of London book series has the protagonist's father and mother be white and Sierra Leonean, though that brings its own immigrant-community dynamic. (Still anti-recommended for you, Ellie.)

[Warren]

I watch a lot of British mysteries and murder shows, because of course I do, with the occasional modern Doctor Who thrown in. A few years ago I noticed appreciatively that there were often couples with one black person and one white person, which I feel like you rarely see on American TV. But lately I've noticed that when a British show has a black character, they're ALWAYS married to a white person, or if they're younger, they have a white parent. Showing a relationship between two black people is practically nonexistent. I'm curious what contributes to the difference between the two. (Or maybe it's all bad data and confirmation bias on my part, I dunno.)

Looking just at the cis-het mixed couples of British television, roughly how often is the black person the woman?

[Number 6]

Well, there are about 2 dozen black people in England, so they have to share.

[Painboy]

I watch a lot of British mysteries and murder shows, because of course I do, with the occasional modern Doctor Who thrown in. A few years ago I noticed appreciatively that there were often couples with one black person and one white person, which I feel like you rarely see on American TV. But lately I've noticed that when a British show has a black character, they're ALWAYS married to a white person, or if they're younger, they have a white parent. Showing a relationship between two black people is practically nonexistent. I'm curious what contributes to the difference between the two. (Or maybe it's all bad data and confirmation bias on my part, I dunno.)

Well the UK black population is only 3% so odds of an all black couple is a lot lower than America where it's 12% or so. Not that they would necessarily be confined to that for a show. But it may be a common enough site in the UK that it seems more normal than an all black couple.