So this is old news, but I've been sitting on it for a while and figuring out what I have to say about it.
Some background: New York City has this stop-and-frisk policy, wherein police can target random people walking down the street and give them pat-downs, with no requirement for suspicious behavior or anything. And whaddaya know, surprise surprise, those 'randomly' targeted for this tend to NOT be white men. Who could've guessed? So quite a few people are piping up to point out that this is not an okay situation, what with the enabling of racially targeted police harassment and all.
New York's mayor, Michael Bloomberg, had this to say, when defending the policy:
"If I had a son who was stopped, I might feel differently about it, but nevertheless..."
What we have here is a radical and blatant failing of empathy. "Well, if I were personally affected by this issue I might care, but because of being a powerful white man I'm not, so whatevs." ???
He said this out loud.
He knows.
He just fails to give a shit, because it doesn't actually impact his little self-bubble.
To care only about issues that affect himself, while claiming to represent a city (a city that, newsflash, contains people unlike him as well, in many different ways, because hey diversity), and implementing garbage policies that are questionable at best and then immediately abused for racial targeting, and to do nothing about that and further to not even see the problem with that?
If this man wasn't busy being actively harmful to his constituents (who are real people who really exist, by the way), I would feel sorry for him. That's one hell of a limited existence you've got there, bub.
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