#CrimingWhileWhite: White people confess crimes on Twitter to highlight police racial bias

Social media campaign comes after months of racial tension in the US

White people have taken to Twitter to expose US police prejudice, confessing they got away with crimes that African Americans would probably not.

Posting using the hashtag #WhitePeopleCriming, some people are confessing to serious crimes such as grand theft auto, others smaller driving violations, and some recounting times when black friends were disproportionately scrutinised or punished.

This social media campaign comes following three high-profile incidents of police violence against black men — Eric Garner who was killed by a chokehold by New York City police officer in July,Michael Brown who was shot 6 times by an officer in Ferguson, Missouri in August, and 12-year-old Tamir Rice, who was shot and killed in Cleveland late last month.

Garner was caught illegally selling cigarettes, 18-year-old Brown had robbed $50 cigarellos from a shop, and Rice had been playing with a pellet gun — all crimes (or, in Rice's case, not a crime) that white people would not likely be killed over, the Twittersphere is arguing.

This campaign stands in contrast to the findings from a Pew Research poll in which twice as many black Americans than white Americans think the Michael Brown shooting says something about larger racial issues in American.

70 per cent of black respondents said police do not treat people of different races the same, whereas the majority of white respondents say police are "good" about race.

Here are some of the best #WhitePeopleCriming:

Drunk driving speed demon

I was pulled over doing 88 in a 45 after having 3 beers. I was breathalyzed and did not pass, but I got no ticket or dui #CrimingWhileWhite
— Anthony Carmen (@nthonyCarmen) December 3, 2014

Boyfriend swears at cops

White BF told cop who stopped him for speeding to "f**k off." Let go with a warning and a "good night." #crimingwhilewhite
— Anne B (@abroshar) December 3, 2014

Tween carjacker

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

'Illegal alien' gets the blame

In high school I got in a 3 car wreck that might have been my fault. The cop told me it was the "illegal alien's" fault. #CrimingWhileWhite
— Elizabeth (@oceana_roll) December 3, 2014

Stop and search profiling

My 13yo son and his friends were loitering at Walgreens recently. Only his black friend got searched for shoplifting. ~ #CrimingWhileWhite ~
— Dave Hoover (@davehoover) December 4, 2014

How the police will respond to #CrimingWhileWhite

Police are really upset about the #CrimingWhileWhite phenomenon, but they've decided to let everyone off with a warning.
— Frank Conniff (@FrankConniff) December 4, 2014

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Social media speak to power

On Kings Highway in Cherry Hill, Unitarian Universalist Church members stand in solidarity with Ferguson residents protesting the grand jury finding in Michael Brown's death. (TOM GRALISH / Staff Photographer)

'Nothing should be normal or everyday about accepting all this," says Ferguson, Mo., Democratic committeewoman Patricia Bynes. "Social media has helped ensure the images and agony stay fresh in people's minds."

Ferguson stays fresh. On Sunday, members of the St. Louis Rams did a pregame salute in protest of what they saw as police violence in the fatal Aug. 9 shooting of Michael Brown. That angered the St. Louis Police Association, which called on the National Football League to punish the players. The league declined.

On Monday, demonstrations around the nation - including at Drexel University and the University of Pennsylvania - organized around the #HandsUpWalkout hashtag. Protesters left schools or workplaces in solidarity with Brown, at the time of day of his shooting, 12:01 p.m. Central time, or 1:01 p.m. Eastern time. Rallies briefly clogged Market Street near the universities. T. Stokes of Philadelphia tweeted: "You know it's real when there's a police helicopter flying above your protest."

The year 2014 has been the year of social media as social protest. Again and again, people have used Twitter hashtags, Facebook posts, Vine videos, Instagram photos, and messages on WhatsApp, WeChat, and many other media to support and organize rallies, often on behalf of marginalized or mistreated groups. Racial injustice has been the issue in Jacksonville, Fla., (in the Michael Dunn trial) and Ferguson. It was gender-related violence in the Ray Rice controversy and the Isla Vista, Calif., shootings.

Worldwide, Muslims resurrected the venerable #NotInMyName hashtag to protest Islamist extremism. Demonstrators in Mexico and China use social media to organize and campaign. And all over the world, video game players joined in the #GamerGate controversy.

So, no question, this is happening. But bigger questions loom.

Charles Gallagher, chair of the sociology, social work, and criminal justice department at La Salle University, asks: "What kind of legs do social media protests have? Do they change anything? Or is it all just 'slacktivism,' the lazy, next-to-useless click-and-take-credit social in-activism of the 2010s? No large-scale studies as yet can answer that question."

It's worth noting, though, that the Oxford English Dictionary welcomed slacktivism into its pages this year. It's a thing.

It's certainly a thing in China and Mexico, with massive, long-term protests honed and organized by social media.
The "Umbrella Movement" in Hong Kong was fanned by a viral image of a man waving off tear gas with his umbrella during a Sept. 29 protest, largely of students, against mainland control over local elections. "It wouldn't have had that name without social media," says James Carter, professor of history at St. Joseph's University. Within days, a statue of "Umbrella Man" had gone up as a symbol of protest. Carter says that hashtags such as #umhk "helped unify diverse protest groups under this one" - pun intended - "umbrella term." The protest is now into December, with government troops closing public squares and arresting demonstrators.

In 1989 in Beijing's Tiananmen Square, Carter recalls, "it was the 'cutting-edge' fax machine that got the story to the outside world. That's dwarfed by the number of ways you can do that now. The government knows the world is watching." Authorities tried to throttle Twitter and the "Chinese Facebook," Weibo, but "the protesters are media-savvy, having grown up with social media and smartphones," Carter says. They did ends-around on censorship, turning to one-to-one media such as WhatsApp and WeChat to warn of crackdowns, organize meetings, and get out the story.

In Spanish, the phrase ya me cansé means "I've had enough" or "I'm tired of this now." In the wake of the horrible Sept. 26 disappearance of 43 students during a demonstration in Iguala, Mexico, allegations arose that the town's mayor was in league with local narco-terrorists. The students have not been found, and national outrage exploded, over both their disappearance and the larger issue of the paralyzing, savage lawlessness in Mexico.
"These larger issues are systemic in Mexico," says Mark Lashley, professor of communication, who studies social media at La Salle University. "It's fascinating to see its expression on social media there."

After a long and bitter news conference on Nov. 7, Attorney General Jesús Murillo Karam said, "Ya me cansé" and tried to leave. Those words soon were shoved down his throat via the Twitter hashtag #yamecanse. According to tracking site Topsey, it was used more than 3.6 million times in November. "That phrase," Lashley says, "was tailor-made for a social-media backlash. This is a substantial movement poised to continue, and you're seeing lots of creative uses of the hashtag, both in the demonstrations themselves" - in which protestors sometimes lie down and pretend to sleep or be tired - and in YouTube videos and editorial cartoons, taking government down a notch and allowing social media to work as the people's voice.

The door of the National Palace on the Zócalo in Mexico City was set ablaze. On Nov. 20, tens of thousands marched down the Paseo de la Reforma in Mexico City and gathered in the Zócalo. Sympathy protests arose in New York; Geneva, Switzerland; and Cologne, Germany.

So - do such media-driven protests "work"? It can be very hard to tell. In Jacksonville, Michael Dunn, who fired a gun into a van and killed a black man, was sentenced to life without parole on Oct. 17. In Ferguson, Officer Darren Wilson, who shot Michael Brown, was not indicted, but he now says he is leaving the police force. On Monday, the White House published a report and guidelines on "Strengthening Community Policing." On the other hand, the Chinese protest seems as if it's being scuttled. And there have been arrests in Mexico - but not of those being accused.

So the question remains: When is social-media protest just slacktivism, and when is it something more? And how do we know when it's working?

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Photo Of Portland Cop Hugging Protester Goes Viral On Social Media

A touching photo of a white police officer hugging an African-American boy at a Portland protest this week has drawn heavy attention on social media. (Johnny Nguyen via Instagram)

PORTLAND, Ore. (CBS/AP) — A touching photo of a white police officer hugging an African-American boy at a Portland protest this week has drawn heavy attention on social media.

The moment was captured by photographer Johnny Nguyen covering a protest in Portland, Oregon, over a Missouri grand jury’s decision not to indict Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson for the shooting of Michael Brown.

At the Portland rally was 12-year-old Devonte Hart, who stood crying out of sadness over the events in Ferguson. He was holding a “Free Hugs” sign.

Portland Police Sgt. Bret Barnum saw the boy’s sign and asked if he could have a hug. The boy gave him one.

Devonte’s mom Jen Hart was there Tuesday and remembers the moment as “one of the most emotionally charged experiences I’ve had as a mother.”

To view the full-size image, along with other photographs from Johnny Nguyen’s coverage of the Portland protest go to: http://chambersvisuals.com/5fjbf7k3oce97juhi5v91c7qeenu36

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Ferguson shooting reaction a study in the growing impact of social media

Sharing sites have done more than bring the fatal shooting in Ferguson to global attention - they also enabled the world to respond. Instantly.

The National Guard patrols outside the Ferguson Police Dept. Photo AFP

The Ferguson shooting is a study, according to one observer, in "how social media make everything everyone's business, whether you want that or not".

Ferguson Democratic committeewoman Patricia Bynes said social media had helped local people share their fears and feelings. "It has kept the conversation going and it has helped inform people about the evidence and circumstances," she said.

Bynes also thinks social media helped export the conflict and meaning of Ferguson to the rest of the world. Ferguson became everybody's business.

On Tuesday night, Ferguson became more than a neighbourhood demonstration over a grand jury decision: It expanded into a national night of protest.

The public was ahead of the media from the outset. According to the Pew Research Centre, more than one million tweets with Ferguson hashtags were traded between August 9, when Michael Brown was killed, and CNN's first prime-time story on Ferguson, on August 12.

In the months since, Ferguson community leaders used social media to urge peace and organise crowd-minders.

"We've seen a lot of creativity in Ferguson, as with other social movement uses of social media," says Mark Lashley, assistant professor of communication at La Salle. "There's a mix of humour and seriousness, as you also see in protests in Hong Kong and Mexico."

According to tracker site Trendsmap, as of Monday morning, the hashtag Ferguson was buzzing all over the world, and from coast to coast in the US, with major spikes in Missouri, but also in Philadelphia and New York, and in Florida and California.

Bynes said that, thanks to social media, "people felt the shock we in this community felt, when they started seeing images of Michael Brown's body in the street uncovered, and it kept being retweeted and people kept seeing it. For others it was images of the mother and stepfather at the scene. They saw the agony happening right there. It's just been a storm ever since, as it should be".

On Tuesday, organised by local and national social media campaigns, largely peaceful protests were launched throughout the country.

In New York, Al Sharpton gave a speech in Harlem, and a large crowd marched from Union Square to Times Square then to Columbus Circle. In Chicago, hundreds marched from the police station through town.

It had its spectacular side. Brooklyn Bridge and the Triborough were briefly shut down in New York, as was Lake Shore Drive in Chicago. In Los Angeles, protesters shut Interstate 110.

And at the White House, Jennifer Bendery tweeted: "At least 200 people chanting 'How many black kids will you kill?'"

As all these things happened, people posted and tweeted. According to the tracking site Topsy, more than 3.2 million tweets using the hashtag Ferguson were posted between Monday and Tuesday afternoons.

Exactly how is this different from the civil rights demonstrations of the 1950s-1970s? Didn't people say, "The whole world is watching" back then? Yes, they did. But as many remarked on Tuesday, today it's in real time.

But the truly new, truly now thing is this: The world could respond. Instantly. And it did. A survey of hundreds of tweets from all over the world suggests that, to these tweeters, the no-indictment decision of the grand jury was yet another racist episode in American history. French justice minister Christine Taubira tweeted: "How old was Michael Brown? 18. TrayvonMartin? 17. TamirRice? 12. How old next? 12 months? 'Kill them before they grow' - Bob Marley".

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as The social media grand jury

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