By now you’ve probably seen or heard about the video of McKinney, Texas, Police Cpl. Eric Casebolt’s outrageous and abusive behavior toward a group of black teens at a pool party celebrating the end of the school year, which included pulling a gun on obviously unarmed teens in their bikinis and swim trunks. It is truly must see to believe, so if you haven’t viewed it yet, do so here.
The party was hosted by Tatyana Rhodes and her sister. They live in the Craigs Ranch community and they say most of the guests are residents as well. The teens claim that a woman at the pool began cursing the teens and using racial slurs and telling them to “go back to Section 8 housing.” Another 14-year-old (white) teen stepped in to tell the older white people they were wrong and shouldn’t be talking to the black teens like that and according to Tatiana Rhodes, that is when one of the white women slapped her.
When the conservative-leaning Dallas Morning News says there’s a race problem, there’s a race problem:
But it’s impossible not to wonder how different a scene this would have been if these kids had been white instead of black. Would Casebolt have dared to drag a blond-haired, blue-eyed girl to the ground screaming “ON YOUR FACE!” at a pool in an affluent suburb?
If your answer is yes, let me know the next time that happens.
We have not yet seen an official explanation about why that officer only the black kids to sit down and handcuffing them. There were plenty of white kids running and milling around. Here’s a term: ‘black goggles’ like we call drunks having ‘beer goggles’. These cops all they see when they see African Americans is potential criminals or at least risks that need to be controlled. But they ignore the whites in the area because they are not trained to fear them.
Let’s remember who started the “fight” the cops were called to break up. These older white people have their own black goggles.
But there’s a silver lining here. The party itself was black and white kids having a good time. The racial ugliness came from older folks, not part of the party, on down to a girl getting slapped coming to the aid of her white friend who stood up for her. And then the horrendous police response, where the cop sat on the black girl but largely ignored the white kids. So, if the kids are exemplary of their generation – that’s a big leap, but let’s say for the sake of argument they are – there is some hope in erasing more of the racial ugliness in the U.S., even if that requires – sorry for being indelicate – generations of older bigots to simply die off.