Marlon James on the people who call the cops

A week after his Facebook essay on the ingrained racism of Minnesota, writer Marlon James was on NPR Sunday to tackle people who call the police.

Appearing on Weekend Edition Sunday, James said white people “need to police their own imaginations.”

“One thing we forget – and funnily enough, it was a policeman who pointed this out – for nearly every situation where the cops show up, there is somebody who called,” he told NPR’s Lulu Garcia-Navarro. “There’s a person calling and saying there’s a thief breaking into his house. There’s a person who looks at somebody who has lived in the neighborhood for 30 years and say they think some black guy is lurking around.”

“Who are these people making these calls?” he asked. “Who are these people saying they feel threatened? I think nobody gets off the hook.”

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