Not watched the video yet because I can’t right now, but the subsequent discussion reminds me of a little tale.
A mate of mine used to drive a Sierra Cosworth back in the day. Ford tiger stripes, wide wheels and lowered to the point of the tyres catching on the wheel arches if he cornered too heavily, drove everywhere like his head was on fire.
He was bemoaning his lot to me one day about being constantly harassed by the police. “It’s because I’m a young black lad in a fancy car,” he told me. He seemed genuinely shocked when I suggested that it might just be because he drove like a tw@.
I don’t doubt that racism occurs, and I expect in the 70s / 80s it was endemic in and out of the police forces (though I’d hope it’s considerably less these days); however, I’d reject the implication that that’s the only reason that youths of darker skin get stopped by the police. To wit,
Statistics relating to stop and search if you are young male and black are revealing.
I’m sure they are, but you need to be very careful about what conclusion you draw from that. Does it imply prejudice, or does it indicate the demographic most likely to be behaving in a manner that would draw attention / merit a stop & search?
I live in East Lancashire, and the vast majority of lunatic (fast, erratic) drivers I see are a) male as close to exclusively as makes no odds, b) young in the vast majority of cases, and c) black probably more often than not but less of a majority than the others. Ie, the largest demographic I’d expect to be stopped are young black men; the second largest I’d expect to see are young white men. Do the statistics bear that out?