General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Sorry, but if you did your job as a parent, your kid would NOT be rioting in the streets!!! [View all]JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)disagrees with the racism of the police.
The core of the problem is racism, and it is hidden from those of us who are white because by definition, it does not happen to us. It especially doesn't happen to a person like me. And that is the fact even though I live in a neighborhood that is under a gang injunction.
It is so definitely racism and so definitely strongest in black neighborhoods that are poor that we barely even see it out of the corners of our eyes. And that goes for me even though I worked with homeless people, mostly single, black men for years and visited jails, etc.
But when I for one look at the statistics, the arrests, and, as I have said, dealt with homeless people or visited a juvenile hall or some other place in which there are a lot of accused people (like the criminal courthouse or a jail), then I see a disproportionate amount of people of color. In LA that includes not just black people, but a lot of people who are clearly Spanish-speaking. (Though the victims of harassment and excessive force according to the statistics are overwhelmingly black).
We just don't see the racism. We don't experience it. The police know they have no free pass to abuse us. Besides, the assumption is that we are innocent until proven guilty. This brutality really is about racism. Although as you say it is also about poverty. There is an assumption in our society that black people are poor and will always be poor, and it goes back hundreds of years. That assumption holds even with regard to people about whom it is clearly false.
I think there is a difference between the widespread harassment by police and the conduct of the police when confronting demonstrators. In the latter situation, in demonstrations, police officers surely know that cameras are running. And similarly, the demonstrators should know that. The police are brutal, but they wait until on the camera, it looks like the brutality is the fault of the demonstrators. They wait until the demonstrators do something dramatic that looks bad to the TV viewers.
Therefore, the demonstrations need to be better organized, better directed. I think that will happen as black people and their supporters realize that the problem of police aggression against them is racial and is not going away without raising the awareness of white voters in an effective way.
The point in the demonstrations, it seems to me (although who am I to say this but then maybe it will help make the demonstrations that are needed more effective) has to be to raise WHITE consciousness of the fact that the police sadism is strangely and effectively targeted at black people. The point is not to give demonstrators an opportunity to vent their anger. The demonstrations should be a means to communicate the reality to the majority which is white.
Regardless how understandable or even justified black people may see the violence of the demonstrators, black people need to understand that even the slightest reaction to the police brutality in front of a rolling camera defeats the purpose of demonstrating. It makes the police look justified when out of the view of the camera the police brutality continues.
To be effective, the demonstrations need in my opinion to contrast the racism of the police with peacefulness of people in the black community. To convey a meaningful message, the demonstrations have to be peaceful. When the demonstrations turn violent for any reason, then white people who have no idea about what is really going on with police racism will see the black violence or disruption and think the police are attacking black people because the black people did something wrong.
I know it is difficult. I know it is unfair. But knowing that most white people have utterly no understanding of and no experience with police brutality in this country, it seems to me that the first task of black people is to make sure white people who are in the majority at the polls understand beyond any doubt that it is racism that is the problem, not some flaw in black people.
Please let me know if you think I am wrong. As I said, that racism in the police is a big problem is very clear from these individual incidents and from the statistics as well as from my own experience. But how to get other white people to SEE that? If you think something else would work, what would you suggest?
I don't think things will change until knowledge of the reality of the problem goes much further beyond the black community. I understand the frustration, but it is going to take organizing and some strategy to make the movement toward decent policing a reality.