This is an editorial I wrote recently (never published, it was too long) about an incident that happened here in Brattleboro VT, a small liberal, mostly white town...
I got a call from my house mate yesterday telling me that she and a friend of hers got stopped by the Brattleboro Police while walking home at 5:30 in the evening. They were asked for their names, and then to show the officer identification. Apparently, two black women had run away from the Retreat, and the police officer was just checking to make sure that my house mate, and her friend, also two black women, were not the culprits. Now in a town as white as Brattleboro, some may easily understand how two black women walking down the street was a rare enough occasion that it warranted the policeman's stopping them in light of the two women who had fled the Retreat, a facility for those struggling with mental and emotional illness. However, this wasn't about two women escaping from the Retreat...
First, let me point out that not all black women look alike. I would be curious to see just what sort of description the police had been given. Were they tall? Short? Did they wear their hair long? Was it braided, or in dreads, or combed out? Were the women fair skinned or dark skinned? Were they thin or thick? Were their any pictures of these women? Or were the Brattleboro police so confident of the limited number of African American women walking down the streets of town that they thought a simple description of gender and race would suffice?
If two white women were to escape the Retreat, would the police be demanding picture IDs from every pair of white women shopping in Sam's, or enjoying a meal at Amy's Bakery? Would the police fail to trust the verbal self-identification that two white women might give? The truth is they never would have stopped white women hanging out together in Brattleboro. They would have had more thorough descriptions, they would have been more careful in who they approached. This was a case of racial profiling. My guess is that even without the women having fled the Retreat, my friends may have been stopped just for the color of their skin.
The fact that the police department feels that the escape of two women from the Retreat gives them the right to terrorize all the black women they find walking around Brattleboro is an outrage. “Terrorize” you ask? How could this be called terror? If you take even a passing glance at the history between the police and the black community in this country it is easy to understand how just the sight of a policeman will send many black youths in the opposite direction. The shootings of Sean Bell, and many others are proof that the lives of African Americans in this country are frequently not saved, but endangered in the hands of police. As the officer was getting back into his car he told my friends that he didn't want to cause any trouble, he just wanted to ensure the safety of the community. Clearly, he is only concerned about the safety of those with white skin, like my own, and is willing to terrorize other races in an effort to protect his.
We may be appalled by the actions of the police, however our own silence is equally damaging to the community. Brattleboro prides itself on liberal values, fairness, and being open to all of humanity. We may even feel so good about ourselves that we assume we are no longer racist. However, the danger with communities that feel they are good enough in this way is that they cease to work on these crucial issues. There is no such thing as being free of racism or classism. The world we live in today is saturated with hidden messages, images, and omissions that bombard our psyches constantly. It is our never ending responsibility to work on ridding ourselves and our communities of these forms of prejudice and hate.
5 comments:
"The world we live in today is saturated with hidden messages, images, and omissions that bombard our psyches constantly."
this says it all, Yerba. i wonder how many people see all this as FACT. and how many times you can say that to people before they go: yah... i get it.
i am sorry if your friend had to go through all this. apparently she is African American, what if she were an african woman studying International Education at KSC or Umass. that would be more challenging. and what if she was Algerian in France.
thank you for your insight.
this i really great post. i learned a lot. there is some hope, Yerba.
Yerba,
Could it be you are being too harsh in your indictment of these particular officers? When did the women the police were looking for leave the retreat? How common is it for anyone to be walking around at 5:30 in the morning? You raise questions about the descriptions the police had without knowing the answers. Perhaps your friends matched the descriptions they had in some other details than just their skin color. Just as we should not make generalizations about people of different backgrounds, neither should we make generalizations about people in the law enforcement community. These people have a very challenging job trying to be appropriate about who they approach and question and knowing that if they neglect to do so, they might be putting the community at risk. In many respects, they are caught between a rock and a hard place. Don't misunderstand. As a white male, I understand that I can't begin to imagine the fear that passes through some people upon being confronted by law enforcement officers. But having worked with many dedicated people in the law enforcement community...people who try their best to be fair and impatial in the exercise of their duties...I cringe when they are lumped together with the less conscientious members of that profession.
My two cents worth.
A proud father.
It is an important point, this rock and this hard place that you bring up. Where and why is there a rock and a hard place. Recently I heard a returned American soldier speak about his experiences at Abu Grahib, the now famous prison in Iraq. Many of the things he said were difficult to hear. He talked a lot about the different things the soldiers felt they had to do in order to maintain their own safety and some sort of control. There were many things working against them including how outnumbered they were, language barriers, having not received any training for their position, no functioning locks for the doors, poor facilities, constant stress and pressure, the justifiable anger of the prisoners and much much more. It was clear that they were in a situation where inhumanity was inevitable both for the soldiers and the prisoners. Shorty after hearing this soldier speak we heard from a psychologist who emphasized that against common belief (or what we would like to believe) a situation will frequently determine ones actions more than a person's personality. So as you say these police officers were in between a rock and a hard place. What created that situation?
One issue you brought up was the safety of our communities. Are our communities safe? If not, why aren't they safe? What might make them safe? What does safe mean?
Another issue is the past experiences between African Americans and the police that make this situation so terrifying. where does the fear, (which I believe is felt on both sides) come from? who benefits from that fear? Who looses? Is that fear inevitable?
Just a few more thoughts and questions, thank you for your comments.
i am giving myself the permission to step right there in your sitting room i mean between a father and his daughter for one reason: injustice can not be justified under any label. the law enforcement community structurally inherited built in views about matching based on distanciation from any racial differences. they thought the two ladies muched two other ladies on their clip board because they were black. well this happens more for black people than it does for whites.
i am assuming that "asian looking people" and "arab looking people" might have experienced same "matchings".
the Law enforcement communities are also american humans who have their own traits or streams of influences that make them more likely to make mistakes and more racial profiling.
i have always been scared of the police and any kind of "uniform-eds" just like that..
the presentation on abughraib is one of those places where offense and defense get confused and there is no answer to " what could they have one differently?".
i am glad this conversation is happening here.
@proud father, thank you for your input.
Mo.B
Anonymous one and two, thanks you both for your comments. I admit I often get lost in this sense of justice, I like to have places to lay absolute blame, to be able to say these people or this system is wrong or unjust and that one isn't, I like it when there is a clear victim and a clear perpetrator. The picture is rarely clear. I do believe though that there are things that aren't just, that the police system exists in a context "saturated with hidden messages, images, and omissions that bombard our psyches constantly" with values about different races, sexes, sexual orientations, nationalities, etc. Any institution that is a part of this context including the school in which I work is racist, classist, heterosexist, etc. As institutions and individuals it is our responsibility to examine ourselves and do our best to rid ourselves of all this, because as we see from the example in the original post, the consequences of not doing it are painful.
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