Institutional racism in policing and how to rectify it.

[bhsup]

In an effort to have a real discussion about this issue that is not linked to something that is actually not an example of it, at all, I thought I would instead open a fresh thread.

Thread rules: (modified after Boots' suggestion)
1. Don't talk about the Ferguson case.
1a. You can talk about other unrelated cases that got some attention because of it, like the mentally unstable guy who was shot after walking toward STL police with a steak knife.
1b. Don't talk about the riots or related cases.

2. Don't talk about any of the very small number of potentially race-related shootings that attracted similarly large amounts of media attention in the past couple of years. For example, talking about how police handled the Zimmerman case is not allowed.

3. Feel free to bring up any other example of police behavior that in your mind illustrates police racism.

4. It is allowed to debate whether individual examples constitute good examples of police racism. However, if the thread gets bogged down over a large number of posts in discussions of whether individual cases illustrate racism or not, any poster may attempt to steer it back on topic. Mods will get involved with modtext if necessary. The topic is institutional police racism in general.

Farm Boy asked me to, "put on the shoes of somebody that lives everyday as the parent of a black son." To put it quite bluntly, I cannot do that. I am not black, I have no grown in as a black man, and even on the children front I cannot since I am not a parent. So, no, I really cannot honestly put myself in their shoes. That does not mean I cannot see that there are issues with police and how they target black men (and women I suppose, but the argument seems to be focused around black men.)

So, what are the causes of it from both sides, and what do we do about it? Some very basic and obvious steps to me seem to be things like:

• More community policing and less patrolling from inside the car.
• Police - neighborhood associations. Organizations dedicated to meeting and keeping the lines of communications open.
• More diverse police maybe? But I don't know if that would really matter initially. Would they see a fellow black man, or just a "sell out" cop?
• The community members themselves also need to step up and be more involved. They cannot just wash their hands and refuse to engage with local government.

Those are just off the top of my head and honestly I don't know if any of them are really relevant or not, but they strike me as decent starting points.

 

[useless]

If you want to deal with institutional racism in policing, the first thing that needs to happen is for people to accept it actually exists.

Also, black lives need to be seen as being of equal worth as white lives.

 

[Farm Boy]

If you can't do it, listen to people who are doing it, Killer Mike the rap artist just talked about it. If you still can't do it, well, it's hard(not sarcastic). Water it down until it makes sense then step it back up. Go down to white adoptive parents' stories trying to raise black sons. If that's boring, water it down more to secondhand experience from the outside: I've only been pushed over by a police officer once. I was having a party in my off campus house, we got a noise complaint and rather than telling us to turn it down he told me I should have been wrist banding people. Then he proceeded to start IDing everyone he could make eye contact with to call over. He was really rather perturbed everyone he was carding was over 21, which wasn't surprising considering everyone at that party was over 21, and eventually he and his backup told me I had to send everyone home. To which I said, "ok" then turned around to do so. When I started to close the door he kicked it back open with me in the way and I wound up on my back. Looking up and seeing two police officers staring at you, just begging you to get belligerent is jarring. You'd be surprised how fast the switch is from, "I keep you safe" to "I desperately want an excuse to arrest you." Imagining that switch being partially tripped erratically and all of the time should be enlightening. Dunno, that's pretty lightweight stuff.

Lincoln once said that bad laws breed contempt of the law when speaking about prohibition. Bad enforcement of law breeds contempt both for those who enforce the law and for the law itself. If we have a problem with black crime in this country, and I think we probably do, it won't be addressed satisfactorily until the black community so plagued feels as if it can actually get justice through playing nice. A large part of what exists in the interim is simply obedience through fear. A most unAmerican sentiment. I hope.

 

[Takhisis]

A large part of what exists in the interim is simply obedience through fear. A most unAmerican sentiment. I hope.

Why 'un'American? You are always using force on other countries, by invading them, by blockading them, by using trade sanctions against them, etc. It's portrayed as legitimate for the US as a whole to use violence that way.

Moderator Action: The thread subject is about police racism. This is not on topic and seems designed to provoke a heated and not especially relevant discussion.
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

 

[useless]

Why 'un'American? You are always using force on other countries, by invading them, by blockading them, by using trade sanctions against them, etc. It's portrayed as legitimate for the US as a whole to use violence that way.

Couple this with America's obsession with guns and it's even more strange.

 

[tetley]

I feel like this has the potential to single policing out. Arguably there are plenty of other institutions that could have an institutionalized racism problem. That does not necessarily make it wrong to single police out, though, since the consequences mean people go to jail or get killed; whereas a white collar crime might just result in a glass ceiling or less money.

 

[Farm Boy]

Why 'un'American? You are always using force on other countries, by invading them, by blockading them, by using trade sanctions against them, etc. It's portrayed as legitimate for the US as a whole to use violence that way.

If the real politic of international relations gets too much, hell, I certainly don't have many objections to a new birth of American isolationism if it means the world can sort its own crap out. I'm not so enamored with the cheap crap from China or the overpriced German cars. So sure, I agree, we should butt the hell out.

 

[Traitorfish]

Why 'un'American? You are always using force on other countries, by invading them, by blockading them, by using trade sanctions against them, etc. It's portrayed as legitimate for the US as a whole to use violence that way.

"Un-American", in this sense, is a shorthand for "contrary to republican principles". It's not an empirical claim about the behaviour of the American state, but a moral claim about how the Good State should behave, and of the special duty that America is believed to have to behave as the Good State. It's not just "USA#1".

 

[tetley]

America is supposed to stand for freedom and be a beacon of freedom to the world. Sadly, their behaviour has been embarrassingly far from it lately, including militarily and in foreign relations. That does not mean all American people have forgotten their roots.

 

[Bootstoots]

Thread rules: Rule #1: Don't talk about Ferguson. At all. In fact, don't talk about any "example" which is not, in fact, an example of it. Rule #2: See rule #1.

Many if not most individual examples of institutional racism among the police are going to be arguable in some way or another. Do you have any objection if somebody brings up individual cases where minorities are controversially shot or otherwise injured or killed by police, as long as those cases aren't well-known?

I certainly understand not wanting this to turn into the umpteenth thread about Ferguson or any of the very few such individual incidents that do get news coverage, but the discussion might be hard to have without controversial individual examples at all. Among the 450-1100 (depending on source) police killings every year, it should still be easy for people to find a variety of examples that got minimal media coverage.

 

[bhsup]

No, I have no objection at all to actual examples being brought up.

 

[Traitorfish]

Who decides what is and is not an "actual example"?

 

[bhsup]

You know, I really would have that would have been easy, but I guess it isn't. If we can't even try to discuss the general issue without arguing over what is and isn't an actual case of police racism, maybe we are just screwed.

 

[Bootstoots]

Who decides what is and is not an "actual example"?

From a moderating standpoint, I'd probably only act on Ferguson-related posts and anything else (e.g. Zimmerman) that got a similar amount of national and/or international media coverage within the past couple of years. I'd also nudge the thread toward the general subject if people get bogged down for a long time in the details of some particular example (whether or not bhsup decides it constitutes an "actual example").

bhsup is of course free to decide whether he considers a given case an "actual example" or not and to try to steer the thread away from cases that fail his test. But I at least won't try to stop anybody from debating other cases whether he considers them "actual examples" or not, provided the thread doesn't get stuck talking about the same case over and over again for multiple pages.

(I'm speaking for myself here and haven't talked to other mods)

 

[Timsup2nothin]

I'm going to make a clear statement of an opinion (that of course I will state as if it is a fact).

The problem isn't as much 'racism in policing' as it is policing in racism.

A cop gets caught on video beating a guy. The guy happens to be black. The county Sheriff runs for reelection and his challenger says "your leadership, and your training, and the environment you create in your department, leads to officers that think it is okay to beat suspects"....and to a large chunk of the potential voters that is an endorsement for the reelection of the current sheriff, because they think the cops beating a black guy is 'probably necessary' to some degree. Because they are racist to some degree.

Now, if that same cop gets caught on video beating a white guy the sheriff is going to get bounced in the next election...and the cop knows it so he is going to be more cautious about beating a white guy. Not because the cop is a racist.

 

[bhsup]

From a moderating standpoint, I'd probably only act on Ferguson-related posts and anything else (e.g. Zimmerman) that got a similar amount of national and/or international media coverage within the past couple of years. I'd also nudge the thread toward the general subject if people get bogged down for a long time in the details of some particular example (whether or not bhsup decides it constitutes an "actual example").

bhsup is of course free to decide whether he considers a given case an "actual example" or not and to try to steer the thread away from cases that fail his test. But I at least won't try to stop anybody from debating other cases whether he considers them "actual examples" or not, provided the thread doesn't get stuck talking about the same case over and over again for multiple pages.

(I'm speaking for myself here and haven't talked to other mods)

Honestly, I'd rather just pass it over to you if that's okay? You're getting what I was trying to do just fine.

 

[Bootstoots]

Honestly, I'd rather just pass it over to you if that's okay? You're getting what I was trying to do just fine.

You're still the OP, but I'll suggest a modified set of rules. How about something like this:

1. Don't talk about the Ferguson case.
1a. You can talk about other unrelated cases that got some attention because of it, like the mentally unstable guy who was shot after walking toward STL police with a steak knife.
1b. Don't talk about the riots or related cases.

2. Don't talk about any of the very small number of potentially race-related shootings that attracted similarly large amounts of media attention in the past couple of years. For example, talking about how police handled the Zimmerman case is not allowed.

3. Feel free to bring up any other example of police behavior that in your mind illustrates police racism.

4. It is allowed to debate whether individual examples constitute good examples of police racism. However, if the thread gets bogged down over a large number of posts in discussions of whether individual cases illustrate racism or not, any poster may attempt to steer it back on topic. Mods will get involved with modtext if necessary. The topic is institutional police racism in general.

 

[Zelig]

Hire more non-Americans into American police forces.

If you bring Indians over on temporary contracts you can probably get away with paying them not much more than minimum wage.

 

[bhsup]

@Boots: Those sound good. I've modified the OP with them.

@Zelig: I really don't think that would accomplish anything. What happens after those temporary contracts are expired and we revert back to our normal police forces?

 

[Tahuti]

Hire more non-Americans into American police forces.

If you bring Indians over on temporary contracts you can probably get away with paying them not much more than minimum wage.

Spoiler :

Moderator Action: Spam.
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889