I’m always amused by the motorcycle gangsters being upset by their “stereotyping.”
If I walked around with a sign saying, “I’m a violent and dangerous person,” people would be likely to stereotype me as a violent and dangerous person.
Many of the members of these clubs doubtless are not actually violent and dangerous criminals, but it’s obvious they get a charge out of others seeing them as such. Which is exactly why they dress and act as they do.
Until of course the image turns around and bites them big time. Then they complain about being stereotyped by an image they carefully created.
So playing “dress up” is now a crime?
The complaint is formal accusation of criminal guilt being leveled on the basis of stereotype/association. If the only ramification of incorrect bias based on stereotype was the public keeping away, you'd probably not hear any complaint.
-- If I walked around with a sign saying, "I'm a violent and dangerous person," people would be likely to stereotype me as a violent and dangerous person. --
Maybe you don't know the definition of the word "stereotype."
RUB's in their "pirate costumes" comes to mind. d;^)
I'm still taking the Romulan Ambassador's stance on this one. At this point in time I don't know what to think.
I find it somewhat analogous to the Mafia. It is true that not every person with some sort of dealings or any associations with the Mafia (or with the OMC’s like the Banditos) are themselves violent and dangerous criminals, nor are they all directly involved with criminal activity. But they have to be blind or naïve or sometimes desperate, not to know that if you lay down with dogs; that you’re going to end up waking up with fleas.
FWIW, my dad who was a carpenter was out of work and could not find steady work in PA and he and my mother along with my older brother were at the brink financially and so they moved in with my mother’s great uncle Joe who lived in Northern NJ and he took them in because he was so fond of my mother. This was in the mid 1950’s.
My mother’s uncle Joe was retired by then but was pretty “well heeled” for a working class “Joe”. Back in the 1920’s through the 1930’s - the prohibition era (and I have the photographs to prove it) Uncle Joe lived in the Florida Keys and owned and operated several “charter fishing boats”. But we are pretty sure he was doing a bit more than just “fishing”.
My father applied for many jobs but couldn’t get any work as he wasn’t a member of the carpenters union. And when he tried to join the union, he was turned down – turned away. He came home very dejected and told Uncle Joe how he was turned down at the carpenters union.
So Uncle Joe picked up the phone and made a call to someone. From what my father related, Uncle Joe called a man who he called by his first name – “Vito”. The conversation when something like: “Hello Vito, this is Joe “X”. Yes it has been a very long time. How are you? You and your family are all well I hope.” They exchanged some other small talk and talked about the “good old days”. And then Uncle Joe told his friend Vito about my father’s difficulty getting work and how he was turned down at the union. He gave him my father’s name and Uncle Joe wrote down some information and thanked Vito for returning the favor and for his friendship. Uncle Joe told my father to go back to the union office the next morning and give the union boss his name, saying, “All is good now, you’ll get to work tomorrow”.
When my father got there, not only did the union official fall all over himself and apologized, saying something like “why didn’t you tell me about your family and knowing “him”, and my father was put to work right away, but not just on any construction job, but as the union official told him, “We’ve got some nice warm inside finish carpentry work at a local school project – we don’t want you to work outside in the cold. And we are even going to waive your union dues for now.”
My father took the job without asking questions but that night asked Uncle Joe who “Vito” was. Uncle Joe didn’t want to say exactly but said, “Many years ago, during Prohibition while living in the Keys, I did some favors for some people - ran some rum from Cuba and some other “stuff”. I got to know some interesting folks who owe me a few favors.” My father wasn’t stupid but understood and later learned that Uncle Joe’s “friend Vito” was the mafia Don - Vito Genovese.
My dad was making really good money, good enough that he and my mother were soon able to move into their own house. My dad was legitimately working and not himself doing anything illegal, not in terms of his work, not performing shoddy work and didn’t witness any shoddy materials being installed, etc. He did say that every payday Friday at lunch time a truck would pull up to the job site and several “Good Fellows” would get out and open the back of the truck.
The truck was full of cartons of cigarettes and bottles of booze, all without tax stamps and sometimes other “merchandise” like jewelry and clothing and small appliances, all being sold at a deep discount. My father along with all the other construction workers knew that these items had been heisted. The “Good Fellows” also sold numbers, i.e. lottery tickets and took bets on baseball and football games.
My dad said it wasn’t “required” to purchase anything but it was, well sort of “expected” that you should buy something, so my dad started out only buying a carton of cigarettes each week, telling himself it was only the government getting cheated out of the taxes. But after a time and since everyone else was, he started buying other stuff and would sometimes buy a lottery ticket, convincing himself it was just a “fringe benefit” of the job and being in the union.
Then one night he had to go to a mandatory union meeting. At that meeting a union official handed out leaflets indicating which politicians; local and state and for Congress that everyone was “expected” (i.e. required) to vote for that upcoming Election Day.
My dad drew the line at this and stood up in the meeting and said that no one was going to tell him who to vote for, that this was un-American and that he and many others here didn’t recently come back from fighting WWII to have some thug tell him who to vote for. A few other guys stood up and agreed. But then a guy in the back of the room stood up and said, “We are your “friends” and you will vote for our friends and just like we tell you. And then pointed to my dad and said, “You better keep your mouth shut and do like you’re told if you know what’s good for you”.
The next day my dad got a phone call telling him not to come to the job site as there wasn’t any work for him that day or the next. Then my mother found a note stuffed in their mail box – the note said: “We know where your son Michael goes to school. It’s a long walk. It would be a shame if anything happened to him.” And then each day and for several weeks, a big black Cadillac was parked across the street from their house right around the time my brother would be coming home from school.
Now out of work again, my dad moved the family back to PA and vowed never to join a union again or ever again accept favors from people associated in any way with the Mafia, even if their intentions for him were initially “good”. “Eventually”, he said, “those dues and favors will be called in and often the price is way too high if you want to keep your dignity and your freedom”.