Using the #CrimingWhileWhite hashtag, white Twitter users are apparently confessing to crimes they committed and got away with, that they say could more likely have gotten a black American arrested. The confessions range from the petty:
I dined and dashed-cop found me at the movies, I paid the bill and he left. I was rude but not arrested and not killed. #CrimingWhileWhite
— Robyn Kopp (@filmfixation) December 3, 2014
to grand theft:
At 13 I stole a car with my friends & drove it 2wks before we got busted. Only one charged was black. #CrimingWhileWhite
— Cecily Kellogg (@Cecilyk) December 4, 2014
to the outrageous:
Exhaled blunt smoke in a cop’s face as I opened my door and then told him he couldn’t come in without a warrant. He left. #CrimingWhileWhite
— Classic (@classicmaterial) December 3, 2014
to incidents when connections were allegedly used to make law enforcement problems go away:
Got pulled over for doing 60 in a 40. Got ticket. GF’s dad, a DA, made it disappear. #CrimingWhileWhite
— Matt Razzano (@MightyXenu) December 4, 2014
#CrimingWhileWhite is an unexpected byproduct of the intense racial tensions in the US around police in Missouri and New York not facing indictment for killing suspects. And while it’s hard to verify the truth of the confessions or race of the confessors, they’re plausible given what statistics have already proven—people of color are more likely to be stopped by police, and arrested for crimes, than whites. Police in Ferguson, Missouri, for example, stopped seven times as many black drivers as white ones last year, and arrested them at twice the rate:
Blacks also are three times as likely to be killed by law enforcement officers as whites.
The bulk of the confessions on #CrimingWhileWhite are what you might call “youthful indiscretions,” ie stupid stuff that many Americans have done as teens, and that, if they are white, they probably didn’t get arrested, prosecuted, or shot for, like underage drinking:
Cop caught me & 3 other underage friends drinking in truck in a parking garage. Let us go & told us to walk home. #CrimingWhileWhite
— Valley Butcher (@ValleyButcher) December 4, 2014
and shoplifting:
I shoplifted when I was 14 and they let me go because my parents came down and we “looked like a nice family.” #crimingwhilewhite
— Joel Watson (@hijinksensue) December 4, 2014
And that anchors what’s effectively the hashtag users’ biggest contention: Small violations of the law, especially if they’re committed while young, are viewed by the US legal system as something that shouldn’t be allowed to ruin an American citizen’s life—at least as long as that citizen is white.
cops give a white kid a break. So do prosecutors, judges, school vice principles, school security guards. That’s #CrimingWhileWhite.
— #PoliceThePolice (@Joe_Schmucc) December 3, 2014
White people on Twitter are confessing to crimes that get black people arrested
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