experience as a valid response to the near-constant reminder that those assigned and empowered to protect you see your skin color as evidence of wrongdoing, and could take your freedom or even yourlife at any time, with no recourse.
In this individualist nation we like to believe that systemic racism doesn’t exist. We like to believe that if there are racist cops, they are individual bad eggs acting on their own. And with this belief, we are forced to prove that each individual encounter with the police is definitively racist or it is tossed out completely as mere coincidence. And so,instead of a system imbued with the racism and oppression of greater society, instead of a system plagued by unchecked implicit bias, inadequate training, lack of accountability, racist quotas, cultural insensitivity, lack of diversity, and lack of transparency—we are told we have a collection of individuals doing their best to serve and protect outside of a few bad apples acting completely on theirown, and there’s nothing we can do about it other than address those bad apples once it’s been thoroughly proven that the officer in question is indeed a bad apple.
So, acknowledging us, believing us, means challenging everything you believe about race in this country. And I know that this is a very big ask, I know that this is a painful and scary process. I know that it’s hard to believe thatthe people you look to for safety and security are the same people who are causing us so much harm. But I’m not lying and I’m not delusional. I am scared and I am hurting and we are dying. And I really, really need you to believe me.
F EW SUBJECTS SHED GREATER LIGHT ON THE RACIAL DIVIDE in the US than the subject of police brutality. Gallup’s polls of white and black Americans on their opinionsof police in the US show that more than double the percentage of whites versus blacks have confidence in police or view them as honest and ethical, and whites are twice as likely as blacks to believe that police treat racial minorities fairly. 7
But this same racial disparity in our feelings about the police is matched by disparities in our encounters with police. As described earlier in thischapter, people of color are more likely to be stopped by police, arrested by police, assaulted by police, and killed by police.
When we look at the difference in opinion towards and confidence in our police force, along with the difference in experiences with our police force, it’s easy to wonder how it’s possible that we all live in the same country.
If we want to understand how experiencesand sentiment between police and communities of different races could be so different, we must first understand the historical relationship between police forces and communities of color.
There has not been a time in American history where our police force has not had a contentious and often violent relationship with communities of color. Our police forces were born from Night Patrols, who hadthe principal task of controlling black and Native American populations in New England, and Slave Patrols, who had the principal task of catching escaped black slaves and sending them back to slave masters. 8 After the Fugitive Slave Act was passed, catching and reenslaving black people became the job of Night Patrols as well, and that job was continued on after the Night Patrols were turned intothe country’s first police forces. Our early American police forces existed not only to combat crime, but also to return black Americans to slavery and control and intimidate free black populations. Police were rightfully feared and loathed by black Americans in the North and South.
In the brutal and bloody horror of the post-Reconstruction South, local police sometimes joined in on the terrorizingof black communities that left thousands of black Americans dead. 9 In the South, through the Jim Crow era and the civil rights movement, it was well known locally that many police officers were
In this individualist nation we like to believe that systemic racism doesn’t exist. We like to believe that if there are racist cops, they are individual bad eggs acting on their own. And with this belief, we are forced to prove that each individual encounter with the police is definitively racist or it is tossed out completely as mere coincidence. And so,instead of a system imbued with the racism and oppression of greater society, instead of a system plagued by unchecked implicit bias, inadequate training, lack of accountability, racist quotas, cultural insensitivity, lack of diversity, and lack of transparency—we are told we have a collection of individuals doing their best to serve and protect outside of a few bad apples acting completely on theirown, and there’s nothing we can do about it other than address those bad apples once it’s been thoroughly proven that the officer in question is indeed a bad apple.
So, acknowledging us, believing us, means challenging everything you believe about race in this country. And I know that this is a very big ask, I know that this is a painful and scary process. I know that it’s hard to believe thatthe people you look to for safety and security are the same people who are causing us so much harm. But I’m not lying and I’m not delusional. I am scared and I am hurting and we are dying. And I really, really need you to believe me.
F EW SUBJECTS SHED GREATER LIGHT ON THE RACIAL DIVIDE in the US than the subject of police brutality. Gallup’s polls of white and black Americans on their opinionsof police in the US show that more than double the percentage of whites versus blacks have confidence in police or view them as honest and ethical, and whites are twice as likely as blacks to believe that police treat racial minorities fairly. 7
But this same racial disparity in our feelings about the police is matched by disparities in our encounters with police. As described earlier in thischapter, people of color are more likely to be stopped by police, arrested by police, assaulted by police, and killed by police.
When we look at the difference in opinion towards and confidence in our police force, along with the difference in experiences with our police force, it’s easy to wonder how it’s possible that we all live in the same country.
If we want to understand how experiencesand sentiment between police and communities of different races could be so different, we must first understand the historical relationship between police forces and communities of color.
There has not been a time in American history where our police force has not had a contentious and often violent relationship with communities of color. Our police forces were born from Night Patrols, who hadthe principal task of controlling black and Native American populations in New England, and Slave Patrols, who had the principal task of catching escaped black slaves and sending them back to slave masters. 8 After the Fugitive Slave Act was passed, catching and reenslaving black people became the job of Night Patrols as well, and that job was continued on after the Night Patrols were turned intothe country’s first police forces. Our early American police forces existed not only to combat crime, but also to return black Americans to slavery and control and intimidate free black populations. Police were rightfully feared and loathed by black Americans in the North and South.
In the brutal and bloody horror of the post-Reconstruction South, local police sometimes joined in on the terrorizingof black communities that left thousands of black Americans dead. 9 In the South, through the Jim Crow era and the civil rights movement, it was well known locally that many police officers were
Similar Books
