What to Actually Learn from Ferguson
Once again Ferguson
is blowing up my Facebook news feed, so I feel the need to mention the drama,
because I agree that we can’t just sweep aside decades of inequality. However,
I’m not sure people are focusing on the actual issues of this case, but instead
are focused on what they perceive or “assume” happened. Yes, there are more
shootings of black suspects than white, but the reason is not necessarily racism.
The reason for these shootings is simply the fact that there are more black
suspects.
About 40% of the prison population is black, compared to about 14%
of the total population. Obama himself notably interchanged two phrases in his
speech. In two subsequent sentences he mentioned “some communities of color” and “low-income,
high crime neighborhoods”. I’m not sure anyone else has noticed yet, but he
used those phrases as synonyms. If even our “black” president believes that
some areas of a city, country, or state are dangerous because of the mentality
of some of the residents, why should we expect our police force to act any
differently?
Now, we have a problem that we can focus on and make
progress towards. Why are the “black” low-income neighborhoods perceived as the
violent and dangerous threat? Is this an economic problem, or an educational
problem, or a cultural problem? What can be done about this problem? If we can
keep or get our black fathers and uncles and brothers out of jail, if we give
young mother’s the advice and training needed to raise their children, if we
can fix the problems in our low-income schools by getting people to actually
volunteer in them one-on-one to change our world, if we can stop the cycle of
poverty in even a few families, maybe we can truly start to fix the problem.
Secondarily, police officers are given more license to harm
because they are often in the way of danger. I was told, if I was ever pulled over, to keep my hands on the steering wheel unless the
officer asked for my license and registration. I am probably the least likely suspect (white and female) but an officer doesn’t know based on the
color of your skin or the glint of your eye whether you are reaching for a gun
or your license and registration. According to a grand jury, it was not about the color of anyone’s skin in
this particular case. The problem is that a suspect was
advancing towards a police officer. There are white suspects who have been
killed in exactly the same manner. Maybe we can use this to advise our children
of all colors to respect the police officers authority and follow instructions,
including laying face down on the ground or turned away from an officer to be handcuffed.
There’s a reason that “police assisted suicide” is a phrase.
Police officers are trained, as they should be, to protect themselves from an
imminent threat. If you want to teach your kids the same thing that I was
taught about respecting and obeying police officers right away, I think that’s
a great idea. Just don’t tell them it’s because of the color of their skin.
When you tell a young child that a police officer will target them just because
they are black, you are creating a new problem. Now that child has a hatred for
and will antagonize white police officers, creating just the problem you were trying
to avoid.
Now, I’m also not going to ignore the fact that a few police
officers are actually racist and need to be taken off the streets. I’m not
saying that’s the case in this situation, but I would assume, based on the
reactions that at least a few police officers in Ferguson are harassing or targeting the black
community in some way. The main problem we face, is how to identify the small
percentage of police officers who are creating a problem. My suggestion would
be a two part system. One part would be an independent national database to
track complaints. You should be able to call a 1-800 number and report if you
were targeted unfairly by a police officer or other law enforcement official due
to your race, gender, or age. A third-party would then need to investigate to
substantiate the claims, but that should be fairly easy (was the police officer
in the stated area at that time, was there a conflicting report, was the person
making the report charged with a crime).
The second part includes taking action on the database. Now,
if a number of reports show up on a particular police officer, we can make
changes, such as fining the officer, assigning administrative leave, switching
the officer to desk work or kindly suggesting they find other employment. We
also now have evidence, if this officer is then charged in a shooting, with
whether they were acting on their documented racist tendencies, or if this is
the first time something has happened and they were acting solely out of fear
and self-preservation.
Let’s not make Ferguson
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