Police Brutality: Only One Expression of Racism
The torturous asphyxiation and subsequent death of George Floyd while handcuffed by Minneapolis police has, once again, brought the reality that black boys and girls and men and women have died at the hands of police at rates staggeringly higher than whites. White lives have always mattered. The movement and organization exist because it somehow has to be made clear that Black Lives Matter too.
Black people are hurt and saddened and enraged and fed up. It’s not surprising that demonstrations have been ignited all across the United States. And allies of all races have participated in those demonstrations. This time around it will not be accepted that the officers would not be fired from their positions or would avoid facing criminal charges. And the horrific status quo that leaves black people, at best, harassed and treated unequally under the law, or at worst, dead at the hands of the police, has to end.
Fortunately, George Floyd’s murder has become about more than police brutality. I am not minimizing the horror of police brutality. Like so many black people, I personally have experienced trauma at the hands of the police. But the police and police brutality are symptoms and tools of the bigger problem here, the violent institution of structural racism. Actually, one of the first iterations of the police in the US served to keep slaves in place.
Structural racism is woven into the laws under which we live, in the credit system that drives our ability to participate in the economy, the neighborhoods in which we live, and so on. Systemic, institutionalized, race-based oppression requires the devaluation of lives, black lives to be specific, and has manifested itself in what happened to end the lives of George Floyd and Tamir Rice, Freddie Gray, Sandra Bland and so many others. That system of oppression, in devaluing black lives, also has served to overvalue white lives. Correspondingly, whites have participated in and benefited from racism, which gets expressed in many ways, including unrecognized white privilege and the operation of implicit bias that has the effect of keeping black people from fully accessing opportunities or the mythical level playing field. I am writing to the binary of black and white, but I do not in any way want to exclude the painful reality of oppression under racism that indigenous and other people of color experience in the US.
I recently attended a leadership meeting for a predominantly white organization. As I heard the coded expression of implicit bias around a gate-keeper issue, I suggested that perhaps the members of the organization might want to explore doing some race bias work, perhaps with an organization such as Undoing Racism. First I was met with crickets, then a 60-something, cisgender, white male, self-assured in his progressivism, responded, “We need to look within ourselves.” The organization is comprised of dedicated, smart, warm and well-meaning people, but the usual thing happened: The uncomfortable task of really looking at the racism that sits within the white people in the organization was not embraced. I wonder if for some whites, rather than deal with what feels internally uncomfortable about their own participation in racism, it’s easier to split that discomfort off and deposit it into an obvious target such as the police, especially when their murderous actions have been captured on video. I also wonder if the police and police brutality have been used by some as a proxy for racism, a depository for other things that are going wrong (e.g., COVID19-related loss of jobs, sheltering-in-place, a future that is unknown, and incompetent and divisive leadership from the Executive Branch), and an avoidance of individual accountability for their participation in racism, especially if that participation is cloaked in good intentions, subtle and unintentional, but problematic nonetheless?
We’ve all heard the analogy: The black person’s experience of daily microaggressions and expressions of implicit bias are paper cuts, individually unpleasant, but sometimes able to heal relatively quickly. And the cuts vary, some deeper than others. However, a paper cut or two every day leaves one in a state of daily discomfort and apprehension of what might come the next day. That’s exhausting. The black person’s experience of the threat of violence, false imprisonment and/or death is even harder to manage, and there’s research literature that speaks to the toll it takes on black psyches, including parents who have to school their black children on how they need to take greater care to be safe than their white counterparts.
I’m always struck by the lack of action on the part of many whites around the state of racism. As a cisgender male, I know I have privilege associated with that identity, and I know that I am sexist. But I fight it. I read authors who deconstruct and address sexism. I consume visual art, literature and entertainment generated by women and that present female-identified perspectives. I support female leaders, businesses and representatives whenever possible. And every day and in every interaction, I am consciously checking myself and working not to oppress or promote the oppression of women by my thoughts, words or actions. And at times I screw up.
The most important thing that a white ally, friend and loved one can do is get educated and step up to challenging the racism that lies within. “Continue the dialogue” is the phrase that keeps popping up on social media about white participation in addressing racism. The uncomfortable reality is that the more one knows about structural racism, the more angry, disgusted and/or ashamed one is. A friend just shared a statement about our current state of affairs: “Truth feels like both a salve and salt in this moment.” I am clear that more information is always better than less information, even if that information is hard to take in. I would ask those who read this blog post to explore and share some of the following resources, a great way to make that “continued dialogue” a substantive one.
Here is a list of readings https://bookshop.org/lists/antiracist-reading-recs and a summary of resources from an intersectional point of view that address race and racism. There is overlap between the two resources.
Boris Thomas, JD, PhD