right. TV will never be an accurate representation of reality, at least under capitalism and other class-ridden systems.
>In Detroit, Black people are 75% of the population but about 50% of the
police force, and this is after twenty years of one of the most anti-racist
mayors in history, Coleman Young, and affirmative action until it was
struck down. <
There's another problem: there's evidence that "minority" members who have joined the L.A. Police Department have generally absorbed the "majority" perspective among cops (i.e., that the cops should act like an occupying army in "minority" communities).
>I don't believe there is any general idea of targetting police jobs in
general among Black people
Nor was it among the Irish. They hit upon the strategy by trial & error in a decentralized way (the way so many things happen).
>You said an "impression" , so I am just giving you another impression. I
noticed the tv pattern too by the way. I always thought it was a Hollywood
way to misrepresent the level of authority in Black people's hands and
thereby undercut this aspect of racism.<
You're right, though I wouldn't attribute too much conscious planning to Hollywood. It's an interaction between liberal intentions among screenwriters and others and the commercial needs of the industry. I didn't want to go any further with my analysis, but the Black lieutenant on NYPD Blue doesn't seem to have much of a role at all compared to the (non-Black) detectives.
Yoshie writes: >Besides, comparisons between ethnic whites and blacks that some made on this thread don't allow us to grasp how white and black races have become social facts. Ethnic whites have been able to become 'truly white' only because they succeeded in drawing the racial boundary between them and blacks.<
It's also possible that the line could be drawn along class lines (as with the "lace curtain Irish" vs. the "shanty Irish"), with the Black cops, civil servants, etc., on the "lace curtain" side.
I for one live in a predominantly Black neighborhood that is also militantly middle-class (homeowners rule!) In cultural ways, I know some Black neighbors who act "whiter" than I am (or at least act that way when I'm around). At a recent neighborhood meeting (in response to a gang shooting that happened at the local park), it was clearly "black and white together" against the outsiders. No-one was racist, but there sure was a lot of (middle) class solidarity.
I'm not one who believes in the "declining significance of race" in US society (since the income distribution has shifted against Blacks in recent decades), but there is also a Black middle class these days. Its existence must be analyzed and understood.
Jim Devine jdevine at popmail.lmu.edu & http://clawww.lmu.edu/Departments/ECON/jdevine.html "It takes a busload of faith to get by." -- Lou Reed.