Submission   21,712

Part of a series on Eric Garner's Death. [View Related Entries]


ADVERTISEMENT

About

#CrimingWhileWhite is a Twitter hashtag associated with alleged confessions of White Americans who have been excused from arrest after breaking the law. The anecdotes are meant to illustrate the widely perceived racial bias in police culture, especially the stark contrast between how the blacks and whites are treated by the law enforcement.

Origin

The hashtag was coined by Jason Ross[1], a writer for Jimmy Fallon's Tonight Show, on the night of December 3rd, shortly after the grand jury decision in the case of Eric Garner's death cleared the NYPD officer of any criminal charges.

Walking While Black

The phrase "criming while white" stems from another well-known expression "walking while black", which pokes fun at the racial profiling against the black community using a wordplay on "driving while intoxicated." Variations of the phrase include “driving while black,” “learning while black,” “shopping while black” and “eating while black.”

Spread

#CrimingWhileWhite[2] saw an explosive growth in volume of tweets overnight, yielding more than 300,000 mentions within the first 24 hours of Ross' original tweet, according to Topsy.[3] The stories told many confessions of easily being let off the hook after committing various crimes, including shoplifting, dining and dashing, burglary and smoking cannabis in front of a cop.

News Media Coverage

On December 3rd, the hashtag was reported on by dozens of major news outlets and blogs in the United States and overseas, including NPR[4], Washington Post[6], CNN[8], ABC News[15], BBC News[16], TIME[9], New York Times[11] and Huffington Post[10], among many others.

Notable Examples


#AliveWhileBlack

In response to the hashtag, Jamilah Lemieux, the editor of Ebony.com, launched #AliveWhileBlack for black people to share stories of their hostile interactions with the cops without any perceivably reasonable grounds.


Search Interest

[not yet available]

External References



Share Pin

Related Entries 1 total

I Can't Breathe

Recent Images 17 total


Recent Videos 0 total

There are no recent videos.




Load 77 Comments
See more