Eric Garner Outrage: White People Take To Twitter To Confess Crimes They've Gotten Away With
While folks rallied in the streets of New York City, people also took to Twitter to have a conversation about "white privilege and policing," reports Buzzfeed.
The hashtag #CrimingWhileWhite was sparked when a writer for the "The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon," Jason Ross, tweeted about his own experience of a crime he committed and was able to get away with. He then asked others to tweet their own stories:
The hashtag began to trend nationally. Here are some of the tweets:
Buzzfeed spoke to some of the people who used the hashtag and got their stories at length, like this one from Joe Arguelles, who confessed to shoplifting (in the tweet above):
Years later, Arguelles came to see that mentality as tied to his status as a white man. "If I weren't white, I assume I wouldn't have been doing it in the first place because my thought process would have been different," he said. "Now I'm more conscious that that's not a luxury everyone has."