I am sick of just being outraged as I sit at home or at the office or at the gym or walking down the street. I feel like my energy towards these recent injustices is not helping anyone and is frustrating me more.
How can we, as a society, go forward from here when twice now two grand juries on opposite ends of the country let someone go with no indictment because he wears a badge? How can people be blocking out the larger discourse behind these isolated events and not see that its the results of a broken and inherently racist system?
So I’ve been trying to think constructively – who are the groups involved; what can be done to fight pervasive institutional racism?
I believe that because it’s the job of the police to offer protective services – they should be learning what that means and how it applies to everyone, regardless of their own personal biases as a person.
The issue isn’t just contained in the minutes surrounding the death of Michael Brown or Eric Garner – the issue begins in what people are learning about other groups of people and how, in a position of power, they are allowing their beliefs to cloud their professional duties.
So my constructive idea to this horrible fucked up situation took a while to think about because honestly, trying to surmount racism as a whole seems overwhelming and futile because- things are set up to run this way.
I am still working on where to next take this idea beyond the platform of this blog, which I know for a fact only 1 maybe 2 other people read, so that in the end it doesn’t make me feel like I am still doing nothing.
I would like it to be mandatory for police officers (during training and then throughout their position as a full-fledged cop) to take a social justice and human diversity class. In training it would be once a week – a part of their requirement to graduate – and across precincts it would be bi-monthly with the requirement to attend once a month or face consequences (lose a shift, or earn a desk.paperwork shift). Police officers need to be forced to examine their own biases and really acknowledge them before they can be asked to not act on them. This would be met with a lot of ‘boys will be boys’ attitude, and ‘what do grown men need to learn about themselves?’ but that is just fear/deflection from facing things that they don’t address daily on a conscious level. It isn’t easy to learn about your biases and admit to having them – especially while you are simultaneously learning how disenfranchised groups of people feel.
The course would being with working to identify biases with various activities (can you tell I took this class in graduate school for my Master of Social Work? good.) and then would build up with guest speakers and break out groups to discuss articles and current events surrounding race and racism. This way, at least when the officers are out in the communities they will be working with a more well-rounded and self-aware knowledge…
It isn’t enough to blame the officers in the cases of Michael or Eric if you’re not willing to blame the system, to tackle the system, to change the system.
2 replies on “How can we go forward from here…”
Nice post julia!
My thoughts: definitely a crazy hard task to change the culture of racism in the police force. It reminds me of the battles that the NFL and NHL have in changing the “culture” of hits to the head in both games. In all 3 aspects (Police, NHL, NFL) the punishments are just not adequate enough to root out the behavior. Solutions for all 3:
NHL = the player who injures another with a blow to the head is out until the injured player returns, the injured player also receives 50% of the other players salary
NFL = same rule
Police Officers = All cops mandated to wear cameras. A committee is setup to review each reported case (the same way their is a committee setup to review every bad hit in the NHL/NFL). With video of every incident this process would function very similar to both the NHL and NFL review process. This committee needs to be diverse but still small enough that it can act quickly (probably less than 10 people). This committee can hand down meaningful punishments (charge with crimes, withold pay, terminate ect..). This model already works with the NHL and NFL players unions (should be easy to convert it to the Police union).
Benefits:
No longer huge delays of justice (think months for grand jury’s)
No longer a secret process
No longer leaves judgement to potentially racists local community members
Does not force affirmative action type hiring standards (although more needs to be done to hire police forces that represent the community they server)
I cannot help but be simply impressed at the following statement. I think I am going to use it any time someone tries to argue semantics/literal points to an argument/movement that is much larger. Oh, and I know the author.
“When a symbol takes on a meaning greater than the event that started it does it matter if it was factual? The “Hands Up…” Protests or “I Can’t Breathe” T-Shirts might be literal representation for some of the protesters but for most it is a rallying point to focus a group around simply concepts of abuse of power or systemic bias in our judicial system. Those are heady points to get around and to mobilize masses for action you need to stay simple.
Arguing about whether his hand were up is pointless. More to the point we should be upset at the current system that has the Prosecuting Attornies (who needs police office co-operation on most cases and works with them day in/out) be the ones that decide if charges should be brought against their co-workers. More needs to be done to address the aggressive behavior of the police nationwide (admittedly relatively rare) against low income groups. More can be done on the military style tactics of the police to handle violent protests. Picking a fight on literal grounds with people that want to stand with those low income/minority groups that face the brunt of police harassment or systemic bias attempts to invalidates their point. Just like lumping in violent protesters with any peaceful protest or discussion legitimizes them. It is a very subtle tactic.”
— My emotionally level-headed, older brother for the win.