RACISM IN AMERICA-What makes racism such an intractable problem in our society is the fact that we try to deal with it by denying the damage it has already accomplished, while assuming we are presently all equal. We're not. We might have started out that way, but a racist human hive continues to systematically give one group of people the royal jelly, while giving another group the royal shaft. The shafted should have no expectation in 2015 that they will somehow become or remain equal and productive in their lives as racism continues to go unchecked.
While I fervently believe that all people were created with equal potential, but “created” equal is where it ends in our country. We continue to degrade and fail to nurture large segments of our minority populations, then wonder why these minorities disproportionately commit illegal acts.
A society that has made "driving while Black" probable cause for being pulled over by the police, interrogated, and often much worse, gives rise to another difficult-to-talk-about predictable reality: society has succeeded in creating a disproportionately large segment of anti-social minorities – people who have been systematically pushed through our schools without an education, socialization, or the basic skills needed to be gainfully employed members of society.
Furthermore, this lumpenproletariat does not even possess enough class consciousness for political action. Too predictably, they often become a criminal element that feeds on its own community and the society-at-large.
Unabated American racism is the only rational explanation for the number of killings of Black men by the police. One thing that never seems to be mentioned when trying to understand why this is taking place is the fact is that 43% of all cops murdered are murdered by Black felons, when Blacks only make up 13.2% of the population. Could this killing of police by Blacks at a rate 3 times greater than one would anticipate by their percentage of the population explain why police tend to be more trigger happy when dealing with "suspects" of color?
I do not offer these statistics as some sort of justification of the wholesale murder of predominantly Black men by our police, but rather to link it as a deferred cost of not having addressed the disparity that is purposefully created in segregated America.
Is it realistic to expect that police officers, with little or no psychology training -- people who did not have to attain the highest scores on civil service examinations to become cops – should be able to deal with the legacy and current deep-rooted reality of pernicious racism? Police do not have the power to change our society. In most cases, they cannot even understand the context that puts them and their survival at cross purposes with being able "to protect and to serve" all citizens.
(Leonard Isenberg is a Los Angeles observer and a contributor to CityWatch. He’s a second generation teacher at LAUSD and blogs at perdaily.com. Leonard can be reached at [email protected]) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.
-cw
CityWatch
Vol 13 Issue 93
Pub: Nov 17, 2015
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