https://youtu.be/kzLT54QjclA
what a difference a year makes. last march when i shared robin d’angelo’s video about white fragility, no one had heard of her or the term. now thanks to the sea change set off by the murder of george floyd by minneapolis police so many people have bought her book that it’s back-ordered. she appears regularly on cable news to discuss this concept in the mainstream media. her thinking sits at the heart of why well-meaning white people often can’t see their own blind spots and what it will take to destroy and uncreate racism in the police force and the society in which it is embedded. she starts by explaining the danger of the pervasive myth that racists are:
- an individual (not a system, an individual)
- who consciously doesn’t like people based on race (must be conscious)
- and who intentionally seeks to be mean to them.
- so that’s individual, conscious, intentional
by that definition, almost no one would admit to being racist because if you tell me i’m racist, whether i’m a cop or just anyone, i’m a bad person and now i’m under attack and therefore i have to defend myself. i noticed this a few years ago in ministerial school when white i and my white colleagues fell all over ourselves to make clear that we were allies, burnishing our ally credentials rather than being willing to do the hard work of identifying the ways we had unconsciously benefited from and reinforced the entrenched system of white supremacy.
i’ve read that while most american police officers have the job title of “peace officer,” they overwhelmingly self-identify as “law enforcement officer.” except that’s not what they do. a more accurate self-identification might be “selective law enforcement officer,” which is a mouthful. there is more and more written about how rooting out bad apples in the police force is beside the point, it is “systemic racism” that is the problem.
the challenge with this line of reasoning is that it implies that “systemic racism” is only in the police department not in the rest of society. the truth is that if we didn’t live in a society that is unconsciously broadly racist, there would be no way that we would have tolerated what should have been unconscionable murder of black men and other people of color by police officers.
if we (and by that i mostly mean white people, which in and of itself reflects racial bias) didn’t unconsciously consider people of color to be separate or different from ourselves, we would have taken to the streets en masse long before now to decry this.
the truth is that all of american consciousness has accepted the fictional belief that white people are safe and people of color, particularly african-american, are scary. white people routinely have referred to neighborhoods that are predominantly people of color as “bad neighborhoods” regardless of other characteristics of the neighborhoods. we have voted for and supported politicians who are “tough on crime.” we have voted for statewide ballot propositions (in california) such as 3 strikes and you’re out. we have voted to borrow money to build more prisons. we have allowed politicians to hand prisons over to private companies who profit off of prison labor. we have voted for politicians who have funded the militarization of police, purchasing humvees, automatic weapons, riot gear. all of it.
i guess i want to point out that i (as well as many of my friends and allies) didn’t vote for these things or support these type of politicians, but i also didn’t fight tooth and nail against it. i didn’t lay down in the street. at some level i allowed it to happen.
today i see that am in favor of defunding law enforcement and demilitarizing the police. i am in favor of re-creating real police officers. and i am willing to lay down in the streets to help it happen.
