The black community’s relationship with law and order has been tenuous, at best, for generations. Sadly, I believe our society has lost sight of the original purpose of law enforcement and how that purpose has been altered in our current societal and global environments. What’s even worse, if that’s possible, is that some groups in our society still embrace the archaic and erroneous ideology that people of color are genetically inferior to those of European descent.
Every society is fundamentally the same. Whether that society just discovered the wheel or one that sends men to the moon, there will be 1) some kind of political structure that identifies how group leaders are chosen, 2) religious institution(s) that reinforces standards of moral behavior, and 3) a structure that determines how individuals contribute to the overall success of the group. Without the successful application of these, the result will often be some form of anarchy, or lawlessness, or rampant immorality, or all of the above.
So, whether it’s a farming community or one that can travel at the speed of sound, the role of law enforcement is virtually the same: maintain accepted forms of social behavior and morality and separate those individuals who pose a threat to the welfare of the group. This obviously works when the group is homogenous where variations from the group norms seldom occur. Such is not the case in this Republic.
So, our society leaders determine acceptable behaviors, often without input from the greater populace. I find it interesting that the very people who now say they should have the right to not wear face-coverings are the very ones who would deny a woman to decide to have an abortion or not. Ok, I know this may be comparing apples to grapefruits, but at the essence of both is the right to choose a course of action for ones’ life. But, I digress
After the 1960s Civil Rights movement, the neoconservatives of the 1970s and 1980s asserted the government had given the black community enough. After all, slavery was over and Jim Crow was now illegal. What else could they want?
The so-called war on drugs seemed like a mantra all could support. Society’s leaders constantly preached that drug use was counter to our social morals, so we should punish and separate those who act outside those morals. In the 1970s and 1980s, everyone, black and white, could support this. News reports documented the disastrous effects of illegal drug use: uncontrolled addictions, prostitution, and crime. Law enforcement throughout this Republic was suddenly sent into communities like storm troopers to root out this scourge of evil. Everyone applauded.
Fifty years later, we now understand that law enforcement disproportionately targeted communities of color. That’s not to imply that drugs were not present in the Vanilla Suburbs, because they were. But law enforcement targeted the Chocolate Cities with a result sociologists decades later are still trying to comprehend. The devastation caused to the black family from the systematic removal of the black male is nearly incomprehensible. While black women did their best to raise children alone, it is still obvious when there’s not a male in the household.
Allow me to take an important digression. I’ve found myself in heated conversations with some black females about the absence of black males from the home. In many instances black females find themselves raising children alone. My contention places me in the direct line of ire is that a woman cannot raise a male child to be a man. I’m sorry, but you simply cannot replicate that which you are not. It would be the same as my instructing a young lady on childbirth. No matter how many books I read or documentaries I watch, I will never know the emotional or physical experiences of another life inside me.
As I said, I’m not trying to deride women for having to step into roles God did not intend for them. In fact, it’s just the opposite. I applaud black women for doing whatever is necessary to ensure the continuity of the family. Whether it was the eighteenth-century slave owner or twenty-first-century law enforcement, the result is the same.
Today’s black community needs to understand and accept that during the war on drugs the white elite used law enforcement as a means of social control. Like antebellum slave patrols, their never-spoken-in-public mission was to ensure public spaces were safe from the perceived threats of the black community, particularly black males.
As a young Thundercat in San Antonio, my father constantly reinforced certain rules of public behavior to ensure I never had a negative encounter with the police. Sadly, I found myself repeating similar rules of conduct to my sons. So, in fifty years little has changed with respect to law enforcement and black males. So forgive me if I’m a little cautious that things will change now.
Another thing the black community needs to understand today is that the white elite has transformed nearly every police department into a quasi-military unit. Its almost been twenty years since the world changed for American society. When those planes descended into the Pentagon and destroyed the buildings of the World Trade Center the white elite initiated a new era of government control under the guise of national defense.
The phrase “first responders” became commonplace and those individuals became revered. Those individuals assigned to various fire and police units around this country should be revered for placing their lives in jeopardy every day. They’ve been tasked with being the first to arrive and assess every catastrophic event that occurs, or could potentially occur. So their training extends far beyond that of the previous generation. When responding to an act of terrorism it makes sense. When responding to a drunk driver in a fast-food drive-through, it does not.
Protests will have some influence on the white elite and cause some white supremacists to feel shame. But those influences will have limits. In nature, we understand that a rainbow appears after every rainstorm. Likewise, the black community understands that a white backlash follows every effort to advance social equity.
Surely, the black community’s relationship with law and order has been tenuous. It’s a holdover from the slave patrols’ antebellum efforts to maintain control and reinforce white supremacy. Nonetheless, it’s time the elites in this Republic either reconsiders the role of law enforcement or make it clear to the populace what that role is.
Later.