From Slave Patrols to Police Brutality
The American police force is a venerated institution regarded as having great prestige. Police are allowed special discounts and privileges as protectors of the people, who are expected to pay them the utmost respect. Even in the midst of the current widespread movement condemning the police, there remains a large demographic which remains in unwavering support of them. Where exactly did this highly regarded practice of policing begin in the US? In the north, many police forces were modeled after those in England, but it's a different story in southern slave-holding states (Hassett-Walker). According to Associate Professor of history, Keisha Blain, it can be traced back to the 1700s, when the Charleston City Watch and Guard was first formed. The majority of those living in Charleston at the time were black slaves, so the white minority formed this group out of fear of slave rebellions (Blain).
This 'guard' was made up of local volunteers, so it was not a true police force with any type of funding or required training. As time went on and slavery was abolished, the Charleston City Watch and Guard, along with the slave patrols in every other slave-holding state transitioned to policing black Americans and enforcing Jim Crow laws as local police forces (Hassett-Walker). The police force as we know it today was truly formed in the 60s, as a result of Lyndon B. Johnson's 'War on Crime' (Blain). This information came as somewhat of a shock to me, given his involvement in the Voter Rights Act and the Civil Rights Movement, and his Great Society Reforms. His choice to increase funding for local police forces, supplying them with millions of dollars of military-grade weapons has had long-lasting effects. For one thing, there was a federal agency called the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration which existed between 1968 and 1988, this is a stark contrast with his initiatives for the 'War on Poverty' and Office for Economic Opportunity, which never became permanent agencies (Hinton). Lyndon always intended to fight crime first and foremost, and that sentiment has continued to be used as justification for increased police violence, surveillance, and excessive sentencing of young black men.
"... in Detroit in the early 1970s, officers of a decoy squad known as STRESS (an acronym for “Stop the Robberies, Enjoy Safe Streets”) killed 17 African American civilians—the vast majority unarmed—during its two years of operation. If the “War on Crime” was meant to be a useful metaphor that would spur policymakers into action, it quickly evolved into what resembled an actual war."- Hinton, Elizabeth
Of course, this is only a glimpse of all the ways racism against black people has been integrated into our justice system. This systemic racism is even integrated into the ways we categorize people in this country, as detailed by the article by Spickard which we read in class. We have based the way we determine the differences between people on physical appearance, but race isn't made up of the clear-cut types we make it out to be. The reason we uphold these labels and divisions is to maintain the ruling class. When the slave patrols were forming, the ruling class was made up of white men. They are the ones who created this division in order to maintain their supposed superiority over the black slaves they kept and tortured. How can we possibly say that police forces, specifically in the American south, are not imbued with systemic racism? This is the reason that people fight for the abolition of such institutions. It may seem radical, but no matter how many anti-chokehold reforms we instate, there are still racist procedures and ideals which remain at the core (Blair).
I bring this up because I noticed that our readings over race, ethnicity, and cultural difference mainly dealt with the intersections between the various identities held within a single person. Most notably, they were about a feminist lesbian raised in a Muslim family (Camper), a feminist woman in a family of strict cultural ideology (Shah), and a Latina woman embracing the duality of her culture (Guzman). All of these pieces indicated inner struggles between parts of one's self and efforts to blend or reconcile them with one another. In all this, there is a certain element of choice and a certain element of ambiguity. These pieces are very important and depict formational experiences had by many people, but they are only part of the picture of how these differences can affect one's life.
Black Americans have little choice in how they are perceived as a result of their physical appearance. This is essentially the definition of racism and every person of color experiences this, including the women in the articles I mentioned above, but I wanted to bring focus to the relationship between black men and the police specifically because I feel it is relevant. Black people live in a society built on the enslavement and exploitation of people who looked like them and are forced to endure the lasting results of this. Some of them have been denied the heritage that Guzman and Shah have ties to through their parents because their ancestors were kidnapped from their homes before they were even old enough to learn about their own culture. This injustice does not exist in the past, but in the present, and it will continue to exist in the future unless those in power admit the racist flaws within their systems and commit to massive reform, if not abolition.
Works Cited
Blair, Keisha. “The History of Policing and Race in the U.S. are Deeply Intertwined.” All Things Considered, Interview by Michel Martin, 13 June 2020, https://www.npr.org/2020/06/13/876628302/the-history-of-policing-and-race-in-the-u-s-are-deeply-intertwined.
Camper, Jennifer. “Ramadan” Rude Girls and Dangerous Women, 1994
Guzman, Sandra. “The Joy of Being Nueva Latina.” The Latina’s Bible. Three River’s Press, 2002
Hassett-Walker, Connie. “How You Start is How You Finish? The Slave Patrol and Jim Crow Origins of Policing” American Bar Association, 12 Jan. 2021, https://www.americanbar.org/groups/crsj/publications/human_rights_magazine_home/civil-rights-reimagining-policing/how-you-start-is-how-you-finish/.
Hinton, Elizabeth. “Why We Should Reconsider the War on Crime.” TIME, 20 Mar. 2015, https://time.com/3746059/war-on-crime-history/.
Shah, Sonia. “Tight Jeans and Chania Chorris.”
Spickard, Paul R., “The Illogic of American Racial Categories.” Frontline, PBS, https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/jefferson/mixed/spickard.html.
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