The Making of A Great America Uprooting the Spirit of Racism

This is an excerpt from the chapter entitled "African Americans and the Police":

Recenlty I was encouraged by the response of the Fraternal Order of Police’s response to George Floyd’s murder:

“The nation’s largest police union condemned officers’ actions in detaining George Floyd, the black Minneapolis man who repeatedly begged for air as a white cop fatally pressed down on his neck.

‘I do not believe this incident should be allowed to define our profession or the Minneapolis Police Department, but there is no doubt that this incident has diminished the trust and respect our communities have for the men and women of law enforcement,’ Fraternal Order of Police President Patrick Yoes said in a statement Thursday.” (Murdock, 2020)

I have shared all this so you can get a sense of the perspective that I am writing from. This has been a grueling book for me. In many ways, it has been an emotional trainwreck for me as a black man to discover a long, deep, and enduring history of police brutality and system racism, particularly against blacks. I couldn’t have imagined that the racism and inequity in America’s police system were this pervasive. It hasn’t been my personal experience, but it has unfortunately been the experience of many, many others. I could literally fill this book and several volumes after it with racist encounters with the police or instances where racist people unnecessarily called the police on a black person.

I am not a cop basher. I’m not writing this book to bash police officers. I have not set out to prove that America’s police force has been overrun by racists and that America is filled with racist white people who will abuse 911 to try to bring harm to black people. I think as I locate myself and try to share where I am with the reader, that Dr. King captures it best in his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”:

I began thinking about the fact that I stand in the middle of two opposing forces in the Negro community. One is a force of complacency, made up in part of Negroes who, as a result of long years of oppression, are so drained of self-respect and a sense of "somebodiness" that they have adjusted to segregation; and in part of a few middle-class Negroes who, because of a degree of academic and economic security and because in some ways they profit by segregation, have become insensitive to the problems of the masses. The other force is one of bitterness and hatred, and it comes perilously close to advocating violence.  (King, Letter from Birmingham Jail (1963), 1963)

As I look at my own life, I place myself in the complacent category, the person who’s “security” has made him “insensitive to the problems of the masses” of people who look like me. I have always been active in the community. I have won awards for volunteering in inner-city schools in St. Louis and Compton. I have have taken pride in mentoring African American Air officers and being active with the Tuskegee Airmen and writing books to bring attention to the concerns of both.  But I have been ignorant of the scope of the present-day disparity between blacks and whites as it pertains to policing because I hadn’t experienced it. In this next section of the book, I share a lot of data and example after example of inequitable treatment. I did it to enlighten people like me.

 I’m not trying to get people to hate the police or white people. I am trying to show people that may be as naïve as I was that many, many black Americans are still experiencing degrading, humiliating, frightful, brutal, and even deadly experiences with the police that are, in many cases, hard to imagine. There are many fine, heroic police officers, and there are many beneficial aspects of the police force. I am not advocating dismantling the police. I am advocating, however, a re-examination of dark areas of America’s system of policing, to make it safer and fairer for all Americans.