Donovan X. Ramsey
In recent weeks, the White
House has reaffirmed its commitment to strengthening "community
policing" around the country. The U.S. Conference of Mayors has coalesced
around the same theme, releasing a report days ago with recommendations for community
policing measures to be adopted nationally. The suggestions for building better
"relationships" and boosting "trust" are comprehensive but,
for a national crisis brought on by the killing of unarmed black people,
there's one thing conspicuously absent from the public policy solutions: the
acknowledgement of racism.
The New Testament says that
faith is "the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not
seen." Well, in the absence of data to support excessive policing and
police brutality in communities of color, it appears that America has just
stepped out on faith.
Rates of violent crime are down
and have been falling sharply for more than 20 years. In fact, since the early
90s, the national homicide rate has fallen by 51 percent, forcible rapes have declined
by 35 percent, robberies have decreased by 56 percent and the rate of
aggravated assault has been cut by 45 percent. And black Americans have
contributed to the decline. For blacks, rates of robbery and serious property
offenses are the lowest they've been in more than 40 years. Murder, rape,
assault, domestic violence—all down.
America is safer than it was 20
years ago. Really. Still, white Americans (and many black Americans, for that
matter) believe there's more violent crime than there actually is, and that
blacks are largely responsible for it.
In fact, nearly half of white
Americans polled believe that violent crime has increased in the last 20 years.
Another 13 percent believe that it's stayed the same. Less than a quarter of
whites realize there are less violent crimes today than there were in the 90s
when the crack epidemic and gang violence were at their height. Even more,
whites overestimate just how much blacks are involved in "serious street
crime" and, on average, believe that black people commit a larger
proportion of crime than whites do. According to a 2012 study by researchers at
the University at Albany, whites significantly overestimate the share of armed
robberies, break-ins and drug crimes committed by black people.
So, this is how we get to Rudy
Giuliani, a man once in charge of the nation's largest police force, insisting
that, "White police officers wouldn't be [in black neighborhoods] if
[blacks] weren't killing each other" as a justification for the killings
of unarmed black people. This is how we get Stop and Frisk policies, Tamir Rice
shot dead in a park, John Crawford shot dead in Wal-Mart, Akai Gurley shot dead
in a dark stairwell, Miriam Carey shot dead outside the White House (the list
goes on and on.) And this is also how we get a grand jury reviewing video of
Eric Garner choked to death and seeing no evidence of a crime. Each is an
example of racist policing based on the assumption of threat.
In a country that has
identified black people as its criminal element, public safety (and perceived
security) is more tied to the suppression of blacks than it is to the
suppression of crime. And as long as the public insists on its myth of black
criminality—almost as an article of faith—police practices will be impossible
to reform.
In the summer of 1963, Boston
public television aired "The Negro and the American Promise," an
hour-long examination of racial tension in America featuring interviews with
Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X and James Baldwin conducted by renowned
psychologist Kenneth Clark. During his segment, Baldwin delivered a blistering
indictment of the white American psyche that is essential to untangle the myth
of black criminality and its serviceability to American identity and feelings
of security.
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In a country that has
identified black people as its criminal element, public safety (and perceived
security) is more tied to the suppression of blacks than it is to the
suppression of crime. And as long as the public insists on its myth of black
criminality—almost as an article of faith—police practices will be impossible
to reform.
________________________________________
"What white people have to
do," Baldwin offers, "is try and find out in their own hearts why it
was necessary to have a Nigger in the first place...If I'm not a Nigger here
and you invented him, you, the white people, invented him, then you've got to
find out why. And the future of the country depends on that."
"Nigger" as used by
Baldwin is, of course, more than an epithet. It is arguably the very
articulation of racism in this country. Its utterance summons a phantom that is
as essential to American identity as the American Dream and the Pursuit of
Happiness. So, when Baldwin talks about the creation of the Nigger, he's
speaking to more than the word. He is assigning responsibility for a construct
that has permeated every single American institution, one essential to the
nation's founding and development.
Willie Horton, for example, was
not the Nigger but it was conjured out of his cold stare, from OJ's courtroom
smirk and even seen by some in the form of our "contemptuous"
attorney general. Darren Wilson invoked the Nigger quite adeptly in his
testimony before a grand jury to convince them it was necessary to shoot an
unarmed Michael Brown at least six times.
"He looked up at me and
had the most intense aggressive face. The only way I can describe it, it looks
like a demon, that's how angry he looked," said Wilson about the moments
before he fired the first bullet into Brown.
"At this point,"
Wilson said, "it looked like he was almost bulking up to run through the
shots, like it was making him mad that I'm shooting at him. And the face he had
was looking straight through me, like I wasn't even there, I wasn't even
anything in his way."
More bullets. Then the final
shot into Brown's head from 148 feet away.
"And then when it went
into him, the demeanor on his face went blank, the aggression was gone, it was
gone, I mean, I knew he stopped, the threat was stopped," said Wilson.
A grand jury believed it. A
great many Americans find the story believable—most without ever even having to
hear it from Wilson's lips or read the transcript.
So, why does America need such
a narrative? The question is something of a psychoanalytic approach to our
country's policing problem but one that's been gaining traction in the media as
of late. Ta-Nehisi Coates gestured toward it in his column for The Atlantic
weeks ago. He wrote:
"...And knowing that
identity is not simply defined by what we are, but what we are not, can it be
that our police help give us identity, by branding one class of people as
miscreants, outsiders, and thugs, and thus establishing some other class as
upstanding, as citizens, as Americans? Does the feeling of being besieged serve
some actual purpose?"
I am not white. The Nigger has
never been of any use to me so, unfortunately, I don't think the question is
mine to answer. I do have my theories, though. I imagine, like Coates seems to,
that identifying blacks as this country's criminals helps white Americans
dismiss their own criminal activity as incidental (teenage drug use, insider
trading, mass shootings, etc). But I think it also must help to organize their
fear in an uncertain world. Like "Goldstein" in Orwell's 1984,
perhaps the Nigger gives white Americans something specific to fear so they
don't fear everything—including themselves and each other.
Ultimately, the contrast
between the reality of black crime and this nation's perception of it reveals
just how invested in the myth of the Nigger America actually is. And, as
protesters push forward and leaders federal and local circle around
"community policing" as reform, Baldwin's question will only become
more urgent. White Americans of good conscience will have to confront their
boogeyman head on. Because the truth is that there can be no "community
policing" in black communities without engaging the community, without
engaging black people and our distortion in the American imagination.
Donovan X. Ramsey is a multimedia
journalist whose work puts an emphasis on race and class. Donovan has written
for outlets including MSNBC, Ebony, and TheGrio, among others. He's currently a
Demos Emerging Voices fellow.
