The Criminal Justice System and Systemic Racism
Atticus Finch peels the criminal justice onion and disambiguates the relationship between the criminal justice system and systemic racism:
This scene is the accurate depiction of what criminal justice looks and feels like to black people today.
If you look and listen closely, you’ll see and hear that the injustice is not only about police policies and procedures, it’s about American society and the American way of life.
Even though the book and movie, “To Kill a Mockingbird”, are set in a different time, the issues that are raised and addressed are reflected in today’s headlines.
Whether what we are witnessing today is the beginning of a seismic shift in societal attitudes and understandings about the nature, effect, and impact of racism, depends on whether current events are seen by white folks as an opportunity to confront their racism or seen by them as another instance that requires a systemic ‘duck and cover’ maneuver that results in throwing the police under the racist bus of obfuscation and denial.
The current trend toward reformation of law enforcement entities and revision of police policies and procedures is like slapping a coat of paint on the front of a house that needs structural repairs from the foundation to the roof.
If allowed to do so, white folks will place all of the blame for systemic racism on the racism that is extant in law enforcement and policing.
Then, they’ll run a few cosmetic rules, regulations, and legislative enactments into the mix.
As soon as the streets are cleared and the protesters quiet down and go home, there’ll be a wholesale return ‘normalcy’….
The only real difference will be that the cops will be left holding America’s racist bag…
Bitey
06/18/2020 @ 12:41 pm
Once upon a time I defended policing in general as I observed that it is a small minority of officers that cause the problem rather than the broad practice. I realize now that I was wrong. And although there are more responsible agencies and less responsible ones, that defense fails completely.
It is more like a person with heart disease claiming that their knees are healthy, and therefore seeking to avoid a quintuple bypass. While the knees may be connected on an extremity, the body is ill and needs repair. Such is the case with law enforcement in the United States. This body will need a few organ transplants, and a change in diet and activity habits…if it survives. While the problems may show themselves in certain areas, the entire body is ill.
Ron Powell
06/18/2020 @ 9:19 pm
Bitey, Glad to see that we’re on the same page.
I’m reasonably certain that there are those who would like to see us be at odds with one another…
Bitey
06/19/2020 @ 7:16 am
We both think for ourselves, as some others here do. Ultimately we will disagree. I think we can both tell that when we do, that will be based upon reasoning and not…however other people arrive at their positions.
As for my position on this, the world seemed to change under my feet without my noticing. Maybe I was deluded from the beginning to believe in our institutions of government when I did. I am not there yet, but I am overwhelmed by the barbarity of the few who maintain their regular pace of offenses, and fully disappointed by the many who do nothing to stop them. Finally I have come to believe that the many have some responsibility for the few.
Ron Powell
06/19/2020 @ 7:43 am
“Ultimately we will disagree.”
We may disagree on some specific points as a matter of rhetorical perspective not so much on fundamental principles…
We can agree to disagree without becoming disagreeable….
We’re on the same team, but playing at different positions….
“Finally I have come to believe that the many have some responsibility for the few.”
This is especially true when “the many” remain silent…
Koshersalaami
06/18/2020 @ 6:09 pm
The main difference today is Tom or someone with him
would have a phone to record some of this on. That’s what’s driving what change we see: the quality and universality of evidence. If it was heresay, you would never have heard of George Floyd.
Ron Powell
06/18/2020 @ 9:13 pm
Kosh,
“The main difference today is Tom or someone with him
would have a phone to record some of this on.”
“The only real difference will be that the cops will be left holding America’s racist bag….”
If you’re talking about turnaround time on departmental dismissals and the filing of charges predicated on real time video evidence that is the basis for a case to be made against police excess and abuse, I would tend to agree….
However, my concern is that these kinds of actions are not nearly sufficient to hail the advent of some kind of momentous shift in universal societal attitudes and national institutional or systemic behaviors.
Dealing with police misconduct and malfeasance is mere window dressing when measured against the changes that must take place re a seismic or cataclysmic societal shift…
We have a much longer way to go than the distance we have traveled…
My concern is talking about changes in the police and policing is light years away from ‘having arrived’.
That is so, even if the conversation is limited only to the entirety of the criminal justice system.
Koshersalaami
06/19/2020 @ 1:30 am
I’m being quite clear that we haven’t arrived. If we had, the main difference wouldn’t be video, it would be whether this happened at all. The police are the scariest part of the problem but they’re not alone. We haven’t even gotten to prosecutors yet.
The truth is that a lot of people still believe in Black inferiority but don’t admit it.
Ron Powell
06/19/2020 @ 3:44 am
“The truth is that a lot of people still believe in Black inferiority but don’t admit it.”
The problem goes deeper than “belief”.
Too many white people unconsciously react to black people as though we’re not human beings.
This unconscious reflexive response impacts every aspect of interaction and endeavor re the personal and institutional relationships between black people and white people…
That includes what white people consciously may , or may not, “believe” about people of color in general, and black people in particular….
.
Koshersalaami
06/19/2020 @ 9:19 am
We may be dealing with semantics here. I think belief drives reactions, especially given that racism is something taught. I will, however, differentiate between actual belief and what one thinks they should believe.
I assume there are lots of Whites who know intellectually that race is biologically insignificant, but they react to what they see. They see one minority whose median levels of wealth, education, socioeconomic success is lower than that of the general population. They notice that immigrant groups enter the country poor but aren’t any more after a generation or two, but that that doesn’t seem to be happening with Blacks. They hear about violence, though that’s class-based but the association stays because of the proportion of the population that doesn’t move out of the class where violence is concentrated. They notice a lot of Black anger without being conscious of the sheer comprehensiveness of the causes, and without that consciousness it looks like an ethnic characteristic rather than the reasonable reaction it is. They listen to a Rev. Wright saying “God damn America” from the pulpit without wondering what could bring a former Marine to that point.
The most optimistic thing I can say is that the White population is finally beginning to get what is behind that anger which means, for millions of White Americans, that Black anger looks reasonable rather than looking like some weird characteristic of the Black population. Some very interesting polling data has come out. One of the more unexpected results is that whether respondents believe the protests are primarily violent or not has no significant effect on whether the respondents support the protests. Think about that for a minute. A majority of the White population supports the protests. A majority of the Republican population supports the protests. What this says is that the majority of Whites and of Republicans now view the circumstances Blacks live with as so bad that violence is considered to be a reasonable response.
This is not just about police. This is a more fundamental shift than that. Black claims of racism have gained credibility with the majority of White Americans. This wasn’t true in polling in 2016. It wasn’t anywhere near true. Frank Luntz, an eminent Republican pollster, says it’s the most drastic shift he’s seen in over a quarter century of polling. Black claims of racism were viewed as either false or exaggerated for most of our history and, in one critical aspect of racism, that changed. That won’t be limited to the police because if Blacks were right about this aspect of racism, Whites won’t be so quick to assume they’re wrong about all the others. The myth of a racially just America is no longer pervasive. In the last four years, over 20% of the Republican population reached the conclusion that they were wrong about Black claims of a key aspect of racism.
I’m not saying that racism is dead and I’m not saying that we’re not in for a lot of disappointment. I am saying that the conversation has changed.
And there’s another aspect to this. Previously, a whole lot of Whites would have seen racism, believed racism, and not cared. The majority of the country cares now. And this is a very serious change. The police as an institution were largely delegitimized as an institution damned near overnight. No one in America could have predicted this shift. No one in America could have come close. If I had told you the day before George Floyd was killed that within a couple of weeks police all over the United States would be panicked that their public image was damned near universally in the toilet, you’d have told me I was flat-out nuts. If you said it to me I’d have told you the same thing. Though the same thing happened a few years ago with the legitimacy of the Confederate flag – the majority of the country changed its view in less than a week.
Ron Powell
06/19/2020 @ 11:00 am
“As soon as the streets are cleared and the protesters quiet down and go home, there’ll be a wholesale return ‘normalcy’….
The only real difference will be that the cops will be left holding America’s racist bag…”
I’ll stand by this assessment until white folks prove me wrong.
The problem I have is, should I be proven wrong, it won’t happen in my lifetime….
Despite the impact and import of recent events, It hasn’t happened yet….