From:  Christopher <djxtopher@y...>
Date:  Tue Jun 24, 2003  12:00 pm
Subject:  Shotting in Va Beach

For those of you not living near Virginia Beach: A
Virginia Beach police officer was shot and killed
during a traffic stop. He was on patrol for drunk
drivers and stopped a Explorer which looked to be
driven by someone who was intoxicated, swerving and
driving irregularly. What he didn’t know was that the
car was being driven by three suspects of a robbery
which had occurred a few moments before. The driver of
the SUV and the officer exchanged fire and were both
killed. The officer was white and the driver a black
man in his early 20’s.

This doesn’t sound all that unusual, and really is
stereotypical, and NONE of us wants to hear that
another black man shot and killed an officer. Not only
because of the continuation of the stereotypes, but
also because a young officer is now leaving behind a
widow and child that is less than a year old. What
really bothers me about this is that a friend of mine
was married to a cop a few cities away and he made
sure to tell her (she is white by the way) that a
couple of niggers killed a cop. That was yesterday,
and today it turns out the the driver was a black
male, and the two other people in the car were a white
male and a white female. They robbed the IHOP where
the white guy and girl worked, she let the two men in
the back door and the three of them were in on the
robbery together. (These details might be a little
off, forgive me if I got anything wrong here)

My point here isn’t to stur up racial conflict, but to
just make everyone remember that being black is still
stereotyped and people still make associations that
are sometimes false. Basically, racism still exists
and often these people would deny it and even believe
they really aren’t, because the facts say blacks
commit crime more than whites. Because of that, I have
to say that the Supreme Court decision to allow some
form of affirmitive action is a sign that we still
have a long way to go and I just hope enough of our
young people actually use those opportunities so that
one day people won’t always expect the face behind a
robbers mask to be a dark one.