Reich writes: "Loose talk about race and ethnicity is especially inflammatory now, just weeks before an election in which the Republican candidate for president has alleged that Mexican immigrants here illegally are 'rapists and murderers'"
Robert Reich. (photo: Getty)
Police's Dubious and Inflammatory Racial Descriptions of Suspects
29 September 16
olice descriptions of murder suspects featuring race or ethnicity are often dubious and inflammatory. Last night, police described the man who killed five people at Macy’s story in the Cascade Mall north of Seattle as a “Hispanic male” according to several Twitter posts from Washington State Patrol spokesman Sgt. Mark Francis.
This morning, Lt. Chris Cammock, a spokesman for the police department, said that description was primarily based on security-camera images of a man with “dark hair” and a dark complexion. “I suppose the race could be anything,” Cammock said.
Sadly, loose talk about race and ethnicity is especially inflammatory now, just weeks before an election in which the Republican candidate for president has alleged that Mexican immigrants here illegally are “rapists and murderers” (in reality, undocumented immigrants commit a far lower rate of serious crimes than native-born Americans) and that “blacks are responsible for 81 percent of homicides against whites” (the real figure is 15 percent).
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