Attitudes, beliefs about race affect us all

One of the interesting “factoids” Jeff Browne of the Public Policy Forum presented at the Milwaukee Aging Consortium member meeting on race relations May 10 was the reluctance of people of color to drive into the more distant—and more white—suburbs. For caregivers, those who place them, and those who need them, that can present big problems.

That reluctance comes from perceptions about dealings with the police and from fear. You can read the report here, but two excerpts follow:

• Police dealings – The biggest single racial gap found on the survey related to dealings with police. Just 1% of whites feel they have ever been stopped by
police because of their race, while half of blacks (including the vast majority of
black males) and a third of Hispanics feel they have.

• Common sense or prejudice? – There is a racial gap in what constitutes prejudice. Most whites view racial profiling by police and avoidance of driving through nonwhite neighborhoods as common sense. Most people of color perceive those decisions as prejudice.

To put some flesh on the bones of the statistics,
consider this story from last week’s Journal Sentinel online:

County park worker sues Tosa
Police seeking black robbery suspect had bias, she says

Dressed in office attire, Alfrieda Durrah was leaving work at a Milwaukee County parks building when she was ordered to the ground at gunpoint by Wauwatosa police, handcuffed and forced to lie face-down on the ground. . .

The lawsuit says that the robber had been described as in her 40s, between 5 feet 8 inches and 5 feet10 inches tall, 180 to 200 pounds with short, straight black hair, brown eyes, medium skin tone, wearing a short-sleeved gray top and blue shorts or pants. . .

Durrah is approximately four to six inches shorter, weighed 20 to 40 pounds less and was six years older than the described assailant, and was wearing completely different clothing, the suit says.

Ms. Durrah’s coworkers were just 3 blocks away, ready to vouch for where she was that day, had anyone asked.

Do you have any experiences in which race played into caregiver relationships? How did the people involved talk about and resolve the problems? If they didn't, what prevented them from doing so? How can we make things better?