Wait, no ... Abou in arabic means "father of ...", so it's in a possessive construct. It needs the other word to make sense. The "ou" is just an approximation, other spellings include Abo, Abu, Aboo, Bou, Ba ...

Whole of North Africa is filled to the brim with Abou-xyz family names, even first names (Abu Madyan "Boumedienne" in Algeria for example) and also many many such names in the other parts of the arab world.

Yes, Abu X is a kunya[0]. It could mean that your child’s name is X, or X could be something more abstract and figurative like a nickname.

The “ou” spelling of و is French style and would usually indicate a French speaking country or an former French colony.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kunya_(Arabic)

Tarek Abou-Khatwa, my guess on that name (i didnt even read the article, lol) is Morocco? wdyt?

"Abou" is a pretty rarely used prefix in moroccan names in my experience. We don't really use Abou or Ibn in moroccan arabic. It's usually "ould", "bou", "ben", and in general last names are rarely derived from filial/familial links. When they are, the "abou" prefix just get blended like gp said into for example, Boumedienne. It almost never remains separate.

Tribal affiliation is more important (though it is true that Abou-x can be a reference to a tribe instead of a particular family) so you get names like Al Alaoui, Al Idrissi, Al Zitouni etc. To me Abou-Khatwa has more of a levant/gulf sound to it.

Could be anywhere from North Africa.

The possibility that the person is from the Levant from among a family who decided to spell their name in a Francophone way cannot be eliminated.

They say "1 [justice system] for poor people and minorities; and 1 for rich people and generally white people". In this case, this may have been about a rich person who happens not to be white (though they may well be - you're assuming a name implies a particular ethnicity, which is likely but not 100% certain).

Which we could falsify, if we could identify minorities who don't have this problem because they're generally wealthy, and recognizable groups of white people who do have this problem because they're dirt poor.

But how could we possibly do such a thing? Here, in the United States?

Guess we'll never know if the racist part is true or not!

Not necessarily, that's just prejudice. Literally.

The sad reality is that poor people and their neighborhoods are more closely scrutinized, small conduct violations are pursued with unjustifiable zeal and harmless behaviors are outright criminalized to facilitate targeting.

It's the definition of "systematic racism", and you - it pains me to say - are the target audience of those that institutionalize it.

:/

So you are saying poor communities only commit more crimes because of the policing?

The "systematic racism" argument is so broad and unquantifiable and avoids so many other meaningful factors that can actually be addressed. It's a way for these communities to avoid confronting any internal problems they have - whether or not these were caused by historic racism, cycles of poverty, etc.

You should look into some stories of how criminals ended up becoming criminals. Present-day racism is rarely the cause.

The sad reality is that poverty is criminalized.