CNN Police and Minorities Town Hall with Don Lemon

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Did anyone else watch this last night?

I felt bad for the police officers who were speaking. I felt like no one was listening to them. Especially the white cop on the stage who kept trying to talk about technical aspects. There was also a black cop in the audience who stood up at one point and talked about his experience being personally profiled as a young man and then doing it himself as a cop. That was really interesting to me and I wondered why that guy wasn't on stage as an expert. There weren't a lot of common people in general. Lots of top people like pastors and heads of things.

It seemed to me like anything any kind of cop said was "wrong" and all the audience wanted to talk about was how they felt. At one point, Don Lemon asked the audience if they thought black people "really felt" fear of police or if it was a "feeling or perception." How is that a question? I mean, am I misunderstanding this, or aren't those both the same thing? "Really feeling" versus "feeling or perception"?

Did anyone else have thoughts about this?

You've heard of the term "Mansplaining", haven't you? It's when a man is trying to explain something to someone who already "knows" everything there is to know about the subject being explained, when the actual truth could be other than what they believe.

So let's call the situation you described "Copsplaining" - the police officer is trying to explain the stress and difficulty of being a cop to people who already "know" that all cops everywhere are nothing but bloodthirsty, trigger-happy, racist cowboys hiding behind their badges, when the actual truth could be other than what they believe.

I had wanted to hear more facts. What they managed to get out sounded pretty interesting. I didn't take any of the "crime and deviance" (that's what we call it) classes in grad school because there are a lot of red-faced declarations going on in that program. I may come off as even tempered on the Internet, but in person I have trouble suppressing the reactions on my face.

Which are often bemusement, irritation, eye rolling, or delight. Inappropriate reactions to what most people say.