Now imagine, for a minute, that your parents instead grew up as black people in the 50s or 60s in one of the many areas where police were often the agents of - let's call it what it was - white oppression. How might that have changed, for understandable reasons, the way not only those people but also their children and their children's children interact with the police? More importantly, how might it impact the belief that police will ever be held accountable for abuses of their power?
I grew up in an area far from here, a former slave state, one where the population was roughly split between white and black, in a rural area, in the 50s and 60s.
Let me start by saying if your parents grew up there, then, you are a grandfather or grandmother yourself, and possibly a great grandparent.
I guess "white oppression" means whatever one says it means. If it was in many areas, that means it wasn't regionally endemic, or it would have been in just one large area. Yes, there were parts of the overall area where blacks seldom went, but similarly, there were places where whites seldom went, too.
There were parallel communities, there were white bars, black bars, and even some smaller establishments which had a 'side' for whites and a 'side' for "colored folks" to drink and socialize in. Either group would say simply that that arrangement eliminated a lot of unnecessary friction. In those days, blacks worked hard, lived as respectably as anyone else in relatively ordinary families (mom, dad, kids), and saw getting an education or learning a trade as the ticket from poverty to prosperity.
There was mutual respect between blacks and whites for the most part, and not the stereotypical 'white man holding the black man down' nonsense that became popularized by the first wave or riot inciting agitators later. The person you hired to do a job was often the best you could get, and many of those were black. No resentment, their work spoke for itself.
Long after the schools were forcefully integrated in the '60s, there was little change in the makeup in the crowds in the traditionally 'black' nightclubs, or in the traditionally 'white' nightclubs. Simply enough, where there was, it wasn't what you see on television with the socially compulsive formulaic 'diversity' of a mixed and happy crowd, although people generally would get along, it was just that people preferred to hang out with those more like themselves. Maybe there just were not enough liberals, or perhaps it was because those were the days when it was readily acknowledged that there were separate and parallel cultures.
No one begrudged anyone honest success, and black owners of black businesses showed up for church on Sunday and at the local, broad based, community functions like fire department parades and the Annual Blessing of the Fleet wearing suits every bit as nice as (or nicer than) any white business leader, driving (or being driven in) a spotless Cadillac or Lincoln, and treated with the same deference and respect as anyone who was a pillar of their respective community. (One Black businessman I knew had a statue of a white jockey holding a lamp in his well manicured yard, to the great amusement of the local population.)
Did the police act as an arm of "white oppression"? Well, not that I could see. White police, and for that matter white firemen and EMS, routinely put themselves in harm's way, regardless of the color of the victims of whatever misfortune befell members of the community, as did black police. Fire Departments were volunteer, very well trained through the State University, and by the '70s became integrated as blacks joined up. Those who did were welcome and became as much brothers in adversity as any of their more fair skinned compatriots. The ambulance wasn't driven more slowly because the patient was black, nor was anyone in more of a hurry to enter or extinguish a burning structure because the children therein were white. All were seen as 'people', period.
As far as the police went, they had a different situation in that they commonly responded to calls regarding someone committing a crime. If their take on who was more likely to commit a crime was colored by the basic description of the perpetrators, well, that was likely a function of who was committing crimes, not of any racial bias. Keep in mind that police were generally called to respond to a crime, not out looking for someone to shake down. As for suspicion, well, police are taught to look for things that seem abnormal. That's part of the job (assuming "normal" falls within the boundaries of the legal constraints we, as a society, have sought for all to go by). So anyone, anything, which looks out of place, unusual,
abnormal is cause for immediate suspicion. Anomalies often herald behaviour outside the lines we have drawn for civility.
The Cadillac with out of state plates in the poorest part of an area may well draw police attention. Is it someone's grandson who went off to college, got a law degree and a job in the City and came back to visit? Is the car stolen? Is it someone bringing in a shipment of the latest poison to be distributed on the street? "The Man" is going to check that out, just as he would check out the lowrider in a neighborhood full of Anglos, or the beater car parked at the edge of a gated community. Does that imply that the police are 'down on' anyone in particular, outside of their normal (and dutiful) suspicion of, well anyone or thing which doesn't appear to be 'normal'?
I guess that would be a question of viewpoint, whether the 'checking out' happened in your front yard, on your street, or not. If there seems to be a lot of that, then it could be that your neighborhood has its endemic problems, and if you are the victim of being checked (without having done anything wrong), that may lead to resentment instead of the concept that the police may be spending a disproportionate amount of manpower and other resources trying to keep your streets less hazardous.
It would seem to me that more of a presence in an area with more crime would be welcome by those seeking the elimination of crime.
There will be those who will rebut that concept with the notion that crime becomes a statistical problem, one which is only found to be more present in the areas considered 'high crime areas' because of 'excessive policing', which means more people are arrested there because there is a heightened police presence, and not because there is any more crime there than elsewhere, which is used to claim some sort of racial bias. But would that hold muster, statistically? Certainly there are white neighborhoods which are very well patrolled--usually wealthy ones, and perhaps better patrolled by LEOs than poorer or ethnically concentrated neighborhoods. It would be hard to mask shootings, assaults, and violent crimes, for instance, in those neighborhoods, just as it is to mask those events in poor neighborhoods. EMS responses and laws governing ER doctors reporting knife wounds, for instance, apply just as much to white folks as black or 'brown', urban or rural. I know, but that's another story: let's just say the roast beef won. So, with reporting requirements on wounds and injuries placed on the medical community, those statistics would bear out that the higher crime areas are, in fact, higher crime areas. Given that the amount of police presence is proportional to the crimes and not the other way around.
When there are more police in an area, being suspicious, looking for criminal action, there will be (numerically) more gestures, actions, or movements on the part of the more numerous persons investigated which are misinterpreted. That misinterpretation can have a bad outcome. You'd think the word would be around by now that a sudden grab for a cell phone in the front of the pants might be misinterpreted as reaching for a weapon, or that jumping a fence and hauling ass might be interpreted as having a reason to run from police. In those situations, the opportunities for "innocent" people to get hurt abound. If someone isn't breaking the law, and they have no warrants out on them, nor things which may be interpreted as illegal (a crack or meth pipe for instance), despite the inconvenience and aggravation of being checked out, why run (in many jurisdictions considered a 'crime' all by itself)?
Now, correctional facilities are full of people who are innocent (just ask them). I guess you could say that if the police were not there, they wouldn't have been arrested and would not be 'criminals', but that raises the question of whether a 'crime' is just a statistical data point, or a real action against the person or property of another, not to mention the peace and dignity of the State. Solved or not, those crimes occur. Whether anyone is arrested or tried or not, someone got hurt, stuff is still missing, someone is stoned or OD'd somewhere. There are reasons for the rules the police enforce. If we don't want to live within those rules (and one should very carefully consider altering or eliminating them) then change the rules. But to decry those present and doing the job of protecting the public against itself in the highest crime areas as creating the problem by
arresting more people for criminal behaviour, won't make the crimes go away. It won't replace grandma's social security check, put the wheels back on someone's car, or draw the meth back out of someone's veins.
If the police are having more interactions with people in an area, the simple fact is that given X number of misunderstandings per 10,000 interactions, areas with more interactions are going to have more misunderstandings, not as a rate, but as a simple number. Even a good cop can get it wrong.
But setting up police to shepherd a peaceful protest and then taking as many as possible out with a pair of snipers while the protesters walk calmly down the street, targeting officers on a basis of race is no way to build harmony between police and the community they serve.
