If you really were upset about the original comments, you would be responding to cubalibre first and foremost, but instead you keep treating her as an after-thought and latching onto other random comments and probing deep into the racial profiling side of a single comment.

I’m beginning to think you were just looking for an opening to “teach” us all and not really all that interested in understanding why the original comments were made.

I’m not sure why crime threads always bring out the know-it-alls, be it on gun control or racial profiling, but it sure is tiring.

“Here’s what’s happened: …a discussion about crime included a comment which racially profiled the perpetrators. A poster (me) interested in moving to the city, reads the post about crime, sees the racial comment, and reacts to it. Using the community on the blog as a data point for the larger Decatur community, he wonders out loud whether this is an isolated comment or a part of a larger issue. He muses whether the community’s reaction to crime will involve an unhealthy and unrelated sidebar on race or be an informed and pragmatic approach (community policing, city budget, neighborhood watches, etc.).”

Horsehockey. Read: A poster who failed to take the remarks that were made in the context in which they were offered overreacted with bombast and accusations of bigotry condonation, even after it becomes clear that his initial impression was incorrect, and people explained that no offense was offered.

“The community responds pretty aggressively and repeatedly encourages the poster to “stay away,” “don’t move here,” etc (poster rereads civil rights laws re: housing and is comforted). The community puts much more of a smack down on the “pompous elitist Skip Gates, Jr.” than it does the poster who made the arguably racially insensitive remark. Rusty Diamond was met with sarcasm; I have been met with “stay away.” LOL”

The community reacted in kind to the poster, whose invocation of Dr. Gates’ situation was both inapt and gratuitous. Failing to evoke the collective guilt that the poster assumed should ensue, he dug himself in further, and received yet more responses in kind.

“What has been missed by many is the fact that living in a community where there might be casual racial insensitivity (albeit by a couple of people on a blog) is very nearly as important to me and my family as whether there is a possibly significant uptick in crime in the area. I might get over someone stealing my car, but the incessant drip of racial insensitivities me and my family might face…well, that’ll drive you crazy.”

The poster attempts to color his reactions as a litmus test of whether he can live where there are people whom he deems racially insensitive (completely ignoring the irony that his previous assumptions of the collective racist mindset of the community are, themselves, insulting and insensitive). A distinct minority of the blog community react with more vehemence, but the poster insists upon tarring all with the same broad bruch (again, ignoring the irony of such a response).

“I”m a black man in America, living in Georgia. Sensitivity is a survival skill, Jack.”

And I have family members & dear friends who are black folks living in America, where oversensitivity and leaping to conclusions aren’t survivial skills, they’re what’s keeping us from moving forward. We get back what we put in, Mongoose– you included.

Mongoose.

To quote Bush, I guess I “misunderstimated” the affinity for debate on DM. My bad!

I would venture to say that there are other characteristics of the “typical perpetrator’ in addition to race. They might mainly dress in baggy clothes. They might mainly be under 30. They might mainly travel in packs of 2 or 3.

The question is – what are you going to use to determine whether you are unsafe? The race of the perpetrators? That’s an unreliable marker, in my opinion.