I don't know why you think it doesn't matter, since if the main reason he was calling was because of the person's race, then it seems odd he wouldn't have mentioned it. But regardless, "the dispatcher's report" did not state "a black man was lying on the couch."
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Replying to @JamesSurowiecki @speechboy71
It establishes that he knew she was Black when he decided she was "suspicious" and "out-of-place." Nobody comes right out and says, "I called because there was a Black person on the couch."
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Replying to @beyerstein @JamesSurowiecki
But she was suspicious and out-of-place. That's why he called security
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Replying to @speechboy71 @beyerstein
I actually think an important part of the story is that the janitor thought "he" was suspicious and out of place, because he believed it was a man in a dorm in a women's college.
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Replying to @JamesSurowiecki @beyerstein
The report says that staff were told to call security! That's what he did.
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Replying to @speechboy71 @JamesSurowiecki
The Building Supervisor, his boss, said that that staff had the option of approaching the person or at least getting a look at them before deciding they were "suspicious." The janitor chose not to do that.
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At the very least, the janitor jumped to a very hasty conclusion that this Black person was suspicious simply because were in a room he didn't expect them to be in.
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Replying to @beyerstein @JamesSurowiecki
Again, you're jumping to that conclusion! I don't know why this janitor did what he did but it takes an incredible leap - and ignoring many other explanations - to argue that he did this out of racial bias
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I don't know if you spend much time around college campuses but in my experience students hang out a lot in marginal places to get quiet time. To automatically assume someone is out of place without determining if they are a student seems very, very, very odd.
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It's not very, very odd if you think it's a man at a women's college, in a place where you've never seen students before.
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The gender misidentification is itself a tell.
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How can it be a tell, since we have no idea what the student was wearing or what her legs looked like? Also, for what it's worth, the cop said that when he and the janitor talked after the incident, the janitor said he didn't know the person was black when he called it in.
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We do know something about what the student was wearing that day: Dressed for the gym in the summer. And that she's a 5'2" female in her late teens.
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