San Francisco’s police union says a city bakery chain has a “bigoted” policy of not serving uniformed cops.
The San Francisco Police Officers Assn. wrote in a social media post last week that Reem’s California “will not serve anyone armed and in uniform” and that includes “members of the U.S. Military.” The union is demanding that the chain “own” its policy.
Reem’s says, however, its policy isn’t against serving armed police officers. It’s against allowing guns inside its businesses.
Your inability to see your selection bias and account for it (while claiming to do just that) is beyond staggering.
Like… you’re saying the words, but then your overall takeaway proves that despite what you’re saying, you have no concept of reality beyond your own lived experience and world view.
I’m not in the ACAB/Defund camp either by any means, but you should either learn to truly acknowledge your bias (and not just pay it lip service), or just fucking own it and stop pretending to have a nuanced and enlightened opinion.
Like…don’t try to make yourself sound like you’re speaking from any sort of well reasoned position that accounts for the limitations of personal experience and acknowledges the experience of others. Just say, “Hey, the vast majority of cops I’ve interacted with, I’ve had no problem with. Therefore I think most cops everywhere are decent people and the tiny fraction that aren’t are just an unfortunate and unavoidable, but ultimately acceptable exception that is worth it in exchange for the services police forces as a whole provide for society.”
Because that’s literally what you’re saying.
You’re a white guy working and interacting with these cops in a religiously charged setting that already puts you in familiar and friendly territory with them in terms of ideology, race, and gender. These are three huge factors that are all coloring the interaction, and given the closely intertwined threads of American right wing politics with police, religion, race, and gender, every single interaction you’ve had with them benefits from being on their side in all the major categories that matter. With that frame of reference, you cannot possibly (at least while maintaining intellectual honesty) use your own personal experience as being at all broadly representative of that of the average person in the general public.
It’s like showing up to game day in the home team’s city wearing the home team’s colors and singing the home team’s fight song…and then the next day when you see a story about how many of those fans you met were harassing and assaulting fans of the other team, your response is, “Well I interacted with dozens of those fans and they were all really nice to me. Since I have real experience with them, that proves that they’re nice people who would never do those bad things. Must have just been 1% of bad apples. But overall, there’s no problem with bad fans since they were all nice to me.”