Opinion: Power, white privilege and the police

To the editor: As a white male, why would I feel privileged when I’ve been stopped, and cited, by a police officer for minor infractions, such as not wearing a seat belt or jaywalking? (Re “My white privilege,” Opinion, June 23)

Meghan Daum construes that her encounter with the police officer was “an extraordinary display of privilege.” Why? She was cooperative, seemingly respectful, and it’s assumed that she did not have any outstanding warrants.

But Daum seems to imply that if a respectful and cooperative black person were to experience the same encounter, the outcome would have been different or that person would have been treated differently.

When I went to school, I always thought that the students who got better grades because they assiduously studied harder, and never got in trouble, were privileged. As an adult, I realize my misjudgment, and now I’ve learned to be privileged.

Giuseppe Mirelli, Los Angeles

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To the editor: While Daum doesn’t have to worry too much about being profiled-stopped-frisked by the NYPD (another allowed 4th Amendment erosion) because of her so-called white privilege, it didn’t get her out of a $200 ticket. Either she’s not as privileged as she thought or just confused.

The five justices who voted for this atrocity are naive to think that police won’t play the percentage game and simply stop more people in a “search and destroy” abuse of power. The only governmental body to put a check on that abuse just said that it “doesn’t mind.”

The only way to safeguard possible abuse of power is to have total transparency with a common-sense national database detailing an officer’s daily record of stops, confiscations, arrests, convictions and complaints, which have nothing to do with personnel files since they’re just statistics.

Leslie Watkins, Claremont

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To the editor: Daum’s op-ed went to great lengths and personal stories to defend the Supreme Court dissent by three justices to the court’s decision.

If she is the enlightened liberal she claims to be, why didn’t she print a word of the court’s majority opinion? Aren’t liberals supposed to look at both sides?

Is she in effect saying the other justices are racists because the court decision may affect minorities more than whites?

Robert Newman, West Hills

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