Cops Getting it Right

Doctor Jay in reply to ktward says:

I’m happy to discuss this. I’m not happy to engage with that which is designed to be unengageable. Which is how I took your first comment.

I do not hold that racism in America is a problem that Those People have. It’s a problem that We have. Often we have this problem without any ill intention or overt bigotry. For instance, my own family history: There was not a shred of overt racist language or talk in my family. My father, who voted for Barry Goldwater, nonetheless took out the Brazil nuts, and told us, “we used to call these nigger toes, but we don’t do that any more.” He would watch the Lawrence Welk show, and mock them because the only black person on the show tapdanced, and smiled without a break.

Nobody in my large extended family gave any house room to racism or white supremacy.

Nevertheless, I failed the Harvard test of Implicit Associations, when it came to race. I find this a bit horrifying, but it poses a problem. How did this happen? I didn’t want this to happen. I’ve spent my life voting for and contributing to the cause of civil rights, and here I am, demonstrating differential meanings to light and dark skin and African features. WTF?

(By now, I hope it’s clear that I’m not remotely a young white man. I once was, though. I beg you to stop assuming you know who I am.)

So I apply systems thinking, and in doing so, I draw from what I know about psychology and sociology. There’s a whole host of things that train me, subconsciously, to this. General media are definitely culpable, though they probably are no more conscious than I am. There are a few actors out there who are malicious, who do follow a white supremacist program. It can be pretty hard to pin them down, though, since they are quite aware that what they are doing does not enjoy general social approval.

But the legacy of slavery, Jim Crow, and de-facto segregation has left us with groups that have disparate reservoirs of cultural and social capital. I’ve been learning a bit about Bourdieu this week, and I think it applies to this situation. Item 3 attempted to describe how.

In general, I think black families and communities engage with this a lot. I think they understand the issue and work very hard to mitigate it. I think that while my own family also worked on “how to engage with police” this is far from universal among white people, and I’ve had white men tell me that it was unreasonable for police to expect them to be 100% compliant.

This sounds like privilege to me. A privilege that I did not have growing up, and I am white. How much worse would it be if I were black?

Nevertheless, they don’t have the same resources. They may not know the right cultural signals. They may be overly anxious during a police stop. I saw video of one heartbreaking shoot where the young black man, instructed to hand over his license, dived into the cab of his truck for it but got shot because his very quick movement startled the officer. This isn’t his fault, it was a bad shoot. It’s understandable that he’s nervous. However, my own training is that no matter how nervous you are, don’t move quickly. There was probably training around this, in the form of games or stories.

And yet, I know a number of black men who are very successful at this, who can project the correct signal to an officer during a police stop, regardless of how they might feel about that stop. I’m reasonably good at it. I’ve had occasion to use it once, when I thought a stop was out of line. I think these black men I know do much better and use it much more.

But my writing here is about understanding the system that’s in play. I want to know why people behave the way they do. An answer of “racism” to me is no answer at all. How did this propagate. How did someone with no intention or interest in racism, end up acting in a way that demonstrates racial bias? How the hell did that happen?

I think that you can’t fix a problem until you understand how it happened, how it works. That’s the meaning of my point (3).Report