Racial Profiling Via Nextdoor.com

[Starry Messenger]

http://www.eastbayexpress.com/oakland/racial-profiling-via-nextdoorcom/Content?oid=4526919

James is a Black teenager who is soft-spoken and looks about three years older than his actual age. On a recent afternoon last month, I chatted with him and Emma, his thirteen-year-old sister, at their house in the Upper Dimond neighborhood in the Oakland hills. The two siblings told me about their first weeks of high school and how they have enjoyed the freedom at times to walk around Oakland's Chinatown district without their parents.

But they never walk around their own neighborhood alone.

The tree-lined residential street of large single-family homes where the Fishers live more closely resembles suburbia than a densely populated city. Positioned at the top of a steep hill near Dimond Canyon Park, their house feels worlds away from the busy urban bustle of MacArthur Boulevard and the Fruitvale district just to the southwest. On the surface, their block looks like an ideal place to raise kids — safe, family-friendly, and quiet. Although their individual street is very diverse — with about ten Black or mixed-race kids now living nearby — white residents are by far the largest racial group in the surrounding area. And it's in this neighborhood, perhaps more so than any other part of Oakland, that James feels most like a target for the uncomfortable glances that are becoming increasingly common in his life.

But he and his parents are not just worried about hurtful stares from neighbors or passersby. Over the last two years, their neighborhood has become overrun with racial profiling — but not by police, rather by mostly white residents incorrectly assuming that people of color who are walking, driving, hanging out, or living in the neighborhood are criminal suspects. These residents often don't recognize that they may have long held racial prejudices or unconscious biases, but recently, they've been able to instantly broadcast their unsubstantiated suspicions to thousands of their neighbors with the click of a mouse.

<snip>

Keyboard warriors are everywhere it seems...

[randys1]

1. White privilege now has it's own website and app.

[annabanana]

2. The one around our house mostly

looks for lost dogs and admires gardens

[Starry Messenger]

3. More than one website, it seems.

[tblue]

4. Then those 'uncomfortable' folks need to move the H out of Oakland

In fact, they may want to vacate the entire Bay Area. There are plenty of all-white cities they can live in if that's what they're after. I used to live right near there and I love Oakland. If you don't like black people, what the H are you doing in Oakland?!

[Starry Messenger]

5. Cheaper rent.

As SF rents got more insane, people pushed out from there and across the bridge. There are so many tech industries in the Bay Area now, minorities are being displaced by gentrification. And anyone who stays has to worry about having the cops called on them by randos on Nextdoor now. Pretty awful.

[bettyellen]

6. ugh, there is so much ignorance there that I have seen here as well. Like this gem:

"In some Nextdoor groups, when people ask their neighbors to think twice before labeling someone suspicious, other users attack them for playing the "race card" and being the "political correctness police." Some groups have even actively silenced and banned the few vocal voices of color speaking up on the websites, according to records that I reviewed."


Truly sad.

[Starry Messenger]

7. Yeah, I thought this article spoke to events here too.

[bettyellen]

8. Yes, the attitudes are all too familiar. The woman needing lemons just killed me.....

It never occurred to her that she could be interacting with an AA woman? Just bizarre.

[Number23]

9. Anytime the "race card" and "race baiting" pejoratives are hurled

you know that you just struck a tingling and ever so painful nerve.

Just saw this bit too:

Some groups have even actively silenced and banned the few vocal voices of color speaking up on the websites, according to records that I reviewed.

The HELL you say!!! I am shocked, SHOCKED I tell you.

[bettyellen]

14. Et tu DU? Hell yes, and I am sick of it.

[Number23]

10. This is so awful and maddening and soul crushing and ENTIRELY PREDICTABLE AND EXPECTED

White residents have also used Nextdoor to complain and organize calls to police about Black residents being too noisy in public parks and bars — raising concerns that the site amplifies the harmful impacts of gentrification. On Nextdoor and other online neighborhood groups — including Facebook pages and Yahoo and Google listservs — residents have called Black and Latino men suspicious for being near bus stops, standing in "shadows," making U-turns, and hanging around outside coffee shops. Residents frequently warn each other to be on the look out for suspects with little more description than "Black" and "wearing a hoodie."

I could spit I am so angry sitting here reading this. Angry, hurt and not even the SLIGHTEST bit surprised.

[Starry Messenger]

11. Knowing the political make-up of the East Bay, the white people doing the reporting are

probably "ZOMG NSA" types too. But they have no compunction about calling down state force and doing their own surveillance of vulnerable neighbors. It's pretty horrifying. I had heard about some of this anecdotally from an activist friend of mine who had been the one to tell me about Nextdoor, and how the new denizens were obsessed with "crime."

Oakland is a special place, it doesn't deserve to be over-run with assholes.

[Number23]

12. Now that's pretty damn interesting

the white people doing the reporting are probably "ZOMG NSA" types too.

Wouldn't surprise me in the least. Nothing surprises me.

This is all nothing new. Racism which results in black folks driving down housing prices and white folks driving it up has been going on forever. White folks running up housing prices and driving black folks out of their homes is nothing new either.

But using technology to not only drive people out of their homes but makes their lives, and those of their children's, as miserable as possible not to mention teach these children that their lives are nothing compared to the word of bigoted white people in the process has me seeing red.

[Starry Messenger]

13. That could be a whole article on its own:

But using technology to not only drive people out of their homes but makes their lives, and those of their children's, as miserable as possible not to mention teach these children that their lives are nothing compared to the word of bigoted white people in the process has me seeing red.

It's evil. And then you also know for sure that you are surrounded by hate, all the time, even where your home is.