I’m struck by the gap between what we discussed here at BMG all weekend and what black communities across America talked about. This iconic image says much, and in my view demands our attention.
More black men were killed by police last week. The weekend was filled with protests, as well as the predictable nonsense from the usual suspects — dutifully reported without comment or clarification by CNN.
The issue of police violence against blacks is not going to go away. In my view, we need more than prayer and hang-wringing.
We need action.
Please share widely!
Two reasons we didn’t discuss it:
1. It’s just too horrible.
2. We don’t really disagree on it.
3. There are no ready made solutions. With so many guns in the population, the Police has the right to apply deadly force in self defense. Since people are people, the boundary between a case of self defense and one of brutality, overreach, criminal negligence is very thin.
It’s a catch 22. If police leans forward, more innocent people get killed by police. If police pulls back, and enforcement slacks, then street shootings go up, as we’ve seen it happen for example in Chicago.
We are paying the price for weapons being so readily available to anybody.
Thank you for posting. This is incredibly important to not lose sight over. I watched an interview with Giuliani. That guy is a disgusting racist. It’s a shame that our media still bring people like him on and give him time to talk without another guest present and without the minimal amount of journalism from the host.
I found this list to be a great roadmap.
#1 seems a particularly good place to start. Two of the higher profile police killings came from interactions started by informal economy activity – selling loose cigarettes and selling CDs. Here’s another great piece on this type of activity. Activities in certain communities, although common, are often seen as bad crimes and “hustling” by those creating policies whereas similar activity in other communities (ride-sharing and apartment-sharing, for example) is celebrated as innovation and “entrepreneurship.” Understanding those differences and biases is huge. Specifically, we can help in a concrete way this year by voting for cannabis legalization. That drug in particular has led to horribly disparate and negative treatment by police for certain communities. Teenagers caught smoking in suburbs might just be told to move along while teenagers in Dorchester might be arrested (or at least harassed) and potentially unfairly charged with intent to distribute because they had a couple pre-rolled joints on them. Of course legalization will create problems but I’m confident we can address those and not just maintain the horrible status quo of how we police and prosecute drug crimes.
#2 is also critical. It’s bad in the Northeast but in the South there are still debtors’ prisons.
I won’t comment on the other recommendations, but I think overall this is a superb list and something we can move toward immediately, and also something that will go far beyond reducing only police brutality.
So good that when I get a chance, I think I’ll add the 15 items to the thread-starter.
I like the list and people should not underestimate the need to act on this issue. Over the weekend the following was posted on the MA State Police Facebook Page. It has subsequently been deleted, but there’s a whole lot of other thank you posts remaining.
Here’s the post: “Today the troopers @ B3-Springfield received a yummy gift from 3 nice and appreciative young African American men, who just wanted to say thanks and to wish the troopers well after a tough week. So sweet… they brought, our favorite…boxes of D&D…thank you.”
Would they ever post “three nice and appreciative young white men brought us donuts” They can’t see it even when it’s right there in front of them.
…I can certainly understand why race was mentioned in this comment. I think the point they were trying to make is that there is not a bright and irreconcilable divide between police and African-Americans. Frankly, white people doing the same thing may not have been as worthy of comment.
That said, clearly more training is needed regarding how police should interact with the citizenry, especially among those of a different background, starting with basics like don’t assume the worst and don’t get so easily upset. You never know when someone you pull over has already been having a bad day, and if you yourself are the one having the bad day maybe think twice about whether you really need to pull that person over this time.
it would be nice if the police (and the rest of us) didn’t subdivide Americans into two groups:
* black people
* people (who implicitly aren’t black)
Even in trying to be positive, they’re still falling into the same trap.
…but it seems whenever I suggest that I get called naive, occasionally even borderline racist myself for NOT being conscious of color:(
It is your refusal to admit the reality of systemic racism that I object to.
The reality is that police kill blacks FAR MORE frequently than they kill whites. The reality is that too many whites, like you, don’t care because they aren’t at risk. The reality is that the racial disparity in police treatment is well-known and has been documented for decades, and our government refuses to act.
Speaking as a bald white man, let me suggest that if a similar pattern of pervasive police abuse against bald white men was sweeping America, you would enthusiastically join me in demanding that we make it stop.
What you call “NOT being conscious of color” I call a willful refusal to acknowledge the brutal reality of government-sponsored racism in today’s America. You and I each see the seemingly endless series of clips showing uniformed police killing and beating blacks.
The fact that the victims are black is CENTRAL to the issue, and yet you refuse to acknowledge this reality. We cannot solve this issue unless and until we admit that the issue exists.
I have never denied there are racial problems in our policing. After all, I see the news too. I also very much care and it blows my mind that this wasn’t addressed ages ago.
I apologize, then.
… It WAS addressed ages ago. Halfheartedly and hamhandedly and with just enough… eh… ‘vigor’… to affect a papering over such that well meaning — but yes, ultimately, NAIVE, white people — could move on with their lives comfortable enough in their own skin to assume everybody else was comfortable in theirs.
About half an ages ago, it was addressed again, and then halfway from there… again and again, it comes up into white consciousness periodically and each time to sink below the level of white consciousness again. In just this manner, the well meaning — but yes, ultimately naive — white people wonder why it’s a problem again leaving the aggrieved black people free from having to wonder why it’s a problem still.
many of these problems will be gone. Inter racial marriage will continue to blur the lines of distinction (a good thing) and statistics may then expose that it is (and has been) a type of class warfare. It shows up more as racial now because more poor are “people of color”.
But for the statisticians of the world now, how do they classify attacks on “blacks” now? Tiger Woods’ kids(just a convenient example) are less black than caucasian, and also asian.
Thanks for the promotion. I did see, and appreciate, Friday’s post.
It was our discussion over the weekend that struck me. I include myself in the implied criticism, by the way.
It was the image that I put at the top of this diary that hit me this morning.
What is happening there? Is she being arrested? Is there even any way to know for sure from still photo only? She appears to be about as non-threatening as they come. She’s dressed as if she’s headed for a nice night out rather than a street protest in the first place.
You can read the backstory here.
…why she was being detained. Was it because she was in the road? Honestly this looks like one of those planned arrests where someone deliberately plans an act of civil disobedience and the cops dutifully play their role by arresting the person in view of the cameras. Usually the way this ends is the arrestee makes bail or spends the symbolic night in jail and everyone goes on their way.
Your bias is showing.
By the standards you imply, we should dismiss the most reproduced image of all time:
In reality, Ieshia Evans is joining Rosa Parks as a hero of the civil rights movement. Your dismissive reaction to this is EXACTLY why BLM is closing highways and cities across America.
It looks to me as though you really really REALLY don’t want to face the reality of what is happening in America today.
I think he asked a legitimate question and wasn’t trying to defend the police at all. Incredulity due to ignorance of the situation is different from a bias. It wasn’t until I went to U Chicago and encountered otherwise educated people, some from really fancy private schools, making ignorant statements about race and the civil rights movement that I realized how my public education in Cambridge was the exception rather than the rule.
So while the rich white kids from Choate and Exeter had a leg up on me with Plato, I would still pick Rindge with its Langston Hughes, Zola Neale Hurston, Malcolm X, James Baldwin, Sonny Achebe and James McBride who I had the privilege of eating lunch with when he visited. Public school kids should read their Plato too, but we’d be better off if more Choate and police academy grads read Their Eyes Were Watching God.
…more than I can see or read (though Paul cleared it up to some extent I see ONE rather than dozens of demonstrators in the picture), but I’ll push back on suggestions I’m ignorant generally on civil rights history.
I didn’t pass judgement in that comment, though I’m not a fan of blocking roadways (nor do I see it as analogous to Rosa Parks). I personally know people who have elected to make statements this way on various issues. They know they will probably get arrested and believe (often correctly) it will draw attention to their issue. You won’t see me doing it, but whatever.
This movement is the historic successor to the Civil Rights movement and is drawing on that well for its civil disobedience. King and Lewis got beaten blocking a bridge, and liberals from Bobby Kennedy to LBJ asked them not to. Fortunately for us they didn’t wait. Neither should BLM today.
I guess my read of history is that things were a lot more desperate then compared to now. This was pre-VRA and the era when many deliberate tactics were used to prevent voting, much moreso than ID laws today. I actually cannot find confirmation quickly for this, but I had always been under the impression that the Selma-Montgomery march which included the confrontation at the Pettus Bridge had some degree of pre-planning and sanction. If it prevented the normal flow of traffic without warning that tidbit has been well-airbrushed out of the historical tellings about that day.
Dr. King certainly did not coordinate with local authorities or the federal government. Your recollection is just plain wrong. The reason it was Bloody Sunday as because the locals egged on by Gov. Wallace were out in force. It was their brutality that led to LBJ begging King to call off the March. He did not. What he did call off was the full march to Montgomery, though he would later give a brilliant speech in the heart of southern resistance.
We re-enacted the arrest of Rosa Parks in 1st grade, I remember my current roommate dressed as the arresting officer (ironically he’s a fireman now) and how we all learned it was morally right to violate fundamentally immoral laws. BRPD lost the moral authority to police it’s community when Alton Sterling was needlessly gunned down, it may be illegal but it is certainly just and moral to demand accountability and justice and a different police department capable of policing it’s community.
And the VRA is being gutted today by the likes of “moderate” jurists like Anthony Kennedy and John Roberts. They too share your incorrect notions of color blindness, racial progress and a fair and balanced judicial system blind to race. It’s not. Nobody is saying today’s conditions for blacks are as bad as Jim Crow, but using that standard of logic, Jim Crow was ok since it wasn’t as bad as slavery. We have a long way to go before we achieve racial equality, and in the words of St. Francis, I believe in peace and it starts with me.
and this is a powerful photo. The cops look like they just stepped off of the Death Star. She’s pretty non-threatening in spaghetti straps and flip-flops. We’re not used to processing this kind of visual material, but this one is pretty stark in its contrasts.
I have a copy of a toddler dressed up in Klan garb toying with the riot shield of the cop there to protect his parents’ right to peacefully assemble. The cop is black. It doesn’t figure prominently in my room. Many kids often discover it and don’t know what to make of it. I got the photo from our METCO supervisor.
there are a few things that can be done.
–The first starts we with not confusing police and policing. When we personalize, we lose track of the systemic nature of the problem, and we irritate the side we least identify with.
–The second is not confusing the many good cops and good departments with the bad ones. As the Dallas department has shown, there are departments trying and doing the right things.
–Racism is pernicious, and it’s not unique to police.
–Legal statutes are problematic. Some police departments, like the Baton Rouge police, have the police bill of rights, which gives every chance for justice to NOT be done. Others have police contracts that ensure investigations are not carried out in the most efficacious manner. Statute could easily prohibit this kind of crap.
— Case law forms the basis for prosecuting police, and it sucks. Tennessee v. Garner prohibits the use of deadly force unless “the officer has probable cause to believe that the suspect poses a significant threat of death or serious physical injury to the officer or others.” If the cop feels like he’s endanger, he can shoot. Case law could be superseded by carefully written statute.
This seems like a highly relevant read on many of those points.
This ex-cop estimates 15% of cops will always do the right thing, 15% will do the wrong thing, and the remaining 70% will get caught up in the prevailing culture of the department. It seems that Dallas has become one of those good districts and Chicago is probably the highest profile example of a bad district. Ferguson also looks like a terrible one and Baton Rouge seems to be in that camp as well (the videos over the past few days are horrible).