It's the Culture

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I want to do a continuation of sorts from the last post, What I See. Not a sequel, because it's going to be drastically different in tone and content, but a further development of some of the ideas and themes in a very different way. In that post I implied that police culture is detrimentally authoritarian. It demands obedience with intimidation and seeks to punish those seen as disobedient, and due to systemic racism automatically assumes black people are disobedient.

I see police in much of the coverage having a punitive intent. It begins with a desire to control, and when people refuse to be controlled it becomes a desire to punish. A desire to hurt. To dominate. Impatience and frustration that people won't just do what they want turning into preemptive aggression, I wrote. That culture starts at the top with the current president and moves down through the ranks, framing the actions of everyone in it so that even individuals with the best intentions find themselves perpetuating it.

It doesn't have to be that way. There are other ways to express authority, to respond to the breaking of laws, and to ensure safety. The current police culture sees all transgressors as enemies and preemptively assumes transgression based on suspicion before any action occurs. And, again, that assumption automatically applies to those who are black, indigenous, and people of color. They are assumed guilty and seen as enemies before any actions or behaviors enter the equation. Because they are part of the United States, and the U.S. is characterized by a white supremacy culture.

White supremacy culture is not necessarily an overt intention to put white people in a position of advantage and people of color at disadvantage, it is instead an unconscious assumption that they already are. It is an often unrealized belief that whiteness is the universal standard for normal and good, and that anything else is a deviation, is in some way wrong, and thus inferior and inherently less valuable. It automatically puts black, indigenous, and people of color at a disadvantage because they can never measure up to the standard. It is not based on individual intent, belief, or action because it is already a part of the culture that shapes those things. Relationships and interactions are already guided, shaped, and defined before choice ever enters into it. Further intentional racist harm is often done by whites on top of this foundation, but even the best-meaning must relate to others from this position, a culture that automatically privileges them.

From Robin DiAngelo's book White Fragility, which I delved into much more deeply in You Are Racist:

My psychosocial development was inculcated in a white supremacist culture in which I am the superior group. Telling me to treat everyone the same is not enough to override this socialization; nor is it humanly possible. I was raised in a society that taught me that there was no loss in the absence of people of color—that their absence was a good and desirable thing to be sought and maintained—while simultaneously denying that fact. This attitude has shaped every aspect of my self-identity: my interests and investments, what I care about or don’t care about, what I see or don’t see, what I am drawn to and what I am repelled by, what I can take for granted, where I can go, how others respond to me, and what I can ignore. Most of us would not choose to be socialized into racism and white supremacy. Unfortunately, we didn’t have that choice. While there is variation in how these messages are conveyed and how much we internalize them, nothing could have exempted us from these messages completely. Now it is our responsibility to grapple with how this socialization manifests itself in our daily lives and how it shapes our responses when it is challenged.

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As I have tried to show throughout this book, white people raised in Western society are conditioned into a white supremacist worldview because it is the bedrock of our society and its institutions. Regardless of whether a parent told you that everyone was equal, or the poster in the hall of your white suburban school proclaimed the value of diversity, or you have traveled abroad, or you have people of color in your workplace or family, the ubiquitous socializing power of white supremacy cannot be avoided. The messages circulate 24-7 and have little or nothing to do with intentions, awareness, or agreement. Entering the conversation with this understanding is freeing because it allows us to focus on how--rather than if--our racism is manifest. When we move beyond the good/bad binary, we can become eager to identify our racist patterns because interrupting those patterns becomes more important than managing how we think we look to others.

As Ibram X. Kendi has taught us, people are not racist or antiracist, ideas and actions are. The same person can do something racist one moment and antiracist the next. The heart of antiracism work is self-examination, figuring out what I do to contribute to and perpetuate racist systems and learning how to do the opposite. It is constantly looking in the mirror to build more self-awareness, seeking the stories of history and the oppressed to gain more knowledge, and learning what behaviors and actions make a difference. There is no destination where full antiracism has been truly achieved, only an ongoing struggle of continuous improvement toward realizing it more fully. It is always and forever about working on yourself first.

In Culture Is Powerful I wrote about my involvement in a group doing antiracist work. Last month we hosted a virtual conversation about white supremacy culture in this time of a pandemic. Because it was most urgently on people's minds, Covid-19 dominated the discussion. For our next event we want to focus on white supremacy culture more deeply. Tema Okun and Kenneth Jones have developed a widely used list of ways that culture manifests, thirteen characteristics. They are: perfectionism, a sense of urgency, defensiveness, valuing quantity over quality, worship of the written word, belief in only one right way, paternalism, either/or thinking, power hoarding, fear of open conflict, individualism, belief that I'm the only one (who can do this 'right'), the belief that progress is bigger and more, a belief in objectivity, and claiming a right to comfort.

I previously did my best to give my own paraphrased description of those characteristics in action:

White supremacy culture creates an inherently passive-aggressive dynamic for relating to others. It starts with standards of perfection, and all personal worth is determined against those standards. What gets attention is failure to meet those standards. The focus goes on what is wrong, with no appreciation for the learning process or growth; everything that is not exactly perfect is seen as having little to no value and is criticized.

All things must immediately work toward the pursuit of perfection with no allowance for anything that might be seen as idleness, including reflection, connection, and inclusion. All that matters is results, the accomplishment of goals that can be measured; no value is attached to process, quality, or intangibles. The goal is constant continuous growth, to get bigger, to have more.

There is always a right way, and only one right way, so difference is wrong. That right way is objectively right, determined by linear logic without emotion, and universally applicable to all people and situations. This leaves no room for nuance, complexity, ambiguity, or middle ground; something is good and right or it is not.

The most authoritative form of communication is written; something written trumps other claims. Everything of value needs to be documented in writing.

There is a clear, hierarchical power structure. Power is limited and needs to be protected and defended. Those with power are right and get to make the decisions. Conflict is a threat to power, and thus bad. Criticism is a threat to power, and thus bad. What is right has already been determined and should not be questioned. Anything that distracts from focus on the singular, narrow ideals of objective perfection is wrong and should be avoided, because that calls into question the personal worth of those struggling to attain perfection. Making them question their rightness in any way is wrong.

Personal worth, responsibility, and accountability are all determined on an individual basis; everyone is individually measured against the standards of perfection.

This month we are digging into more of the personal work. We are asking participants to examine themselves in light of the characteristics to see how they manifest them in action, to try to figure out how they express the behaviors to perpetuate the system. As leaders, we are each working to do that for ourselves. My attempt follows. It is still a sketchy, young work in progress. I need to go much further to develop a better understanding of the harm I unintentionally do in each area and figure out how I can do better. The work is not easy and takes time.

Perfectionism: little appreciation is expressed for the work that others are doing, it is common to point out what is wrong rather than what is right, making a mistake is equated with being a mistake.

• Me - I have a tendency to hold myself and others to very high standards of perfection, I almost always immediately see what is wrong and must make an effort to acknowledge what is right, and the more stressed or tired I am the more nitpicky and negative I get, fixating on pointless details as an obstruction to getting things accomplished.

Sense of Urgency: this makes it difficult to take time to be inclusive, and follow thoughtful decision-making paths, to think long-term or through consequences. 

• Me - More than deadlines (which I never miss but don’t hold so much against others), I get impatient and bothered when I feel others are being inefficient or wasting time. I often react harshly, whether internally or externally, before I catch myself.

Defensiveness: organizational structures are set up to protect power as it exists, people respond to new or challenging ideas with defensiveness, criticism of those with power is viewed as threatening and inappropriate or rude. Lots of energy is spent trying to make sure people’s feelings aren’t getting hurt.

• Me - I can get very angry when I feel my expertise is being questioned. Most of the time I’m humble in most areas, but there are times when someone challenges something I feel particularly right or qualified about and all of a sudden I’m in a rage.

Quantity over Quality: resources are directed toward producing measurable goals, things that can be measured are more valued that things that cannot. Adherence to process at all costs, for instance sticking to an agenda instead of actually listening to people in a discussion.

• Me - My initial thought is I am often critical of this in others, so I might need a little time and help figuring out where it trips me up.

Worship of the Written Word: if it isn’t in a memo or a document it doesn’t exist, little value is placed on other forms of communication.

• Me - This is all me. I feel I haven’t really thought something until I’ve written it down, and need to read things to really learn them. More than that, I feel something in writing is more authoritative than something said; I don’t care what that expert told you, I need to see it in writing or it’s not valid or true.

Only One Right Way: once people are introduced to “the one right way to do it” they will “see the light.” If they can’t see why this is the one right way to do it, there is something wrong with them.

• Me - My initial thought is I am often critical of this in others, so I might need a little time and help figuring out where it trips me up. Though . . . where I am happy for others to find their own “right” ways to doing things, I don’t want to be forced to do them someone else’s way--I’ll leave you to do it your way, just please leave me to do it my way.

Paternalism: those with power think they are capable of making decisions for those without, don’t feel the need to understand the viewpoint or experience of those for whom they are making decisions.

• Me - My initial thought is I am often critical of this in others, so I might need a little time and help figuring out where it trips me up. Though my wife is good at giving me gentle reminders when I slip into paternalism with our kids. It’s certainly something I try to avoid, but I know I slip up. I’m more likely to be pedantic, reverting to authority not based on position but “expertise.” And maybe mansplain from learned gender habits, not from a feeling of power but unconscious assumed right.

Binary (Either/or) Thinking: no sense that things can be both/and leads to simplify complex problems and decisions.

• Me - I’m all about complexity and nuance at a conscious level. I’m suspicious of easy, simple answers. So, again, I might need a little time and help figuring out where it trips me up. I do like things to be orderly, and instinctively want rules  to not be broken.

Power Hoarding: power is seen as limited with only so much to go around. Those with power assume they have the organization’s best interests at heart and feel threatened by those advocating for change and assume they are ill-informed, emotional or inexperienced.

• Me - My initial thought is I am often critical of this in others, so I might need a little time and help figuring out where it trips me up.

Fear of Open Conflict: those in power avoid open conflict and ignore or run from it. When someone raises an issue that causes discomfort blame is placed on that person rather than actually inspecting the issue at hand.

• Me - This is my Mennonite background, not only pacifist but non-confrontational. Virtues emphasized were humility, calmness, politeness, and consideration, and conflict was the height of rudeness and self-centeredness. My family always avoided issues and talked around problems, and we tried to never say anything that might be perceived as mean or demeaning. It’s so ingrained in me that my heart races whenever there is tension in interpersonal dynamics and I can’t stand the thought of someone being unhappy with me or a situation I’m involved in. I internally flinch at the possibility of conflict and have to really work up to dealing with it. I instinctively want everyone to feel at peace at all times, even if only in appearance.

Individualism: people believe they alone are responsible for solving a problem. The idea that if something is going to be done right “i’ll have to do it myself.” No ability to delegate or work in a team. Accountability goes up and down, not sideways to peers or those who your organization serves.

• Me - I’ve always found true collaboration difficult. Coordinated individual pieces are no problem, but actual sharing of the work is hard. I like to have my personal thing I’m responsible for and be left to my own devices. I like being part of a team, but only so long as I have my personal bit of territory where I get to do my own thing. I’m all about my individual autonomy.

Progress is “Bigger, More”: success always means growing bigger, doing more. Little, no or negative value placed on quality.

• Me - My initial thought is I am often critical of this in others, so I might need a little time and help figuring out where it trips me up.

Objectivity: the belief that there is such a thing as “neutral” and that emotions are irrational, destructive and have no place in decision making. Requiring folks to think in a linear fashion and invalidating those who think in other ways.

• Me - This is an area I have worked hard to improve for a long time, accepting emotion and intuition and context. I’m naturally logical and analytical, and have always been easily frustrated when people don’t “make sense” to me in those terms--I want them to be logical and analytical as well. I’ve made a lot of progress, but the instinct is still there.

Right to Comfort: scapegoating those who cause discomfort, the belief that those with power have a right to emotional and psychological comfort.

• Me - See Fear of Open Conflict above. It was part of my upbringing that conflict is bad because it makes people uncomfortable. Making people uncomfortable is rude and inconsiderate. Strong emotions make people uncomfortable. Even after a lifetime learning to accept that is not true for others, learning to appreciate their loudness, open emotion, expressiveness, and fierceness as admirable, I can’t manage to find any of those qualities in myself.

That's a piece of the antiracist work I'm currently in the midst of.

If it seems this post has drifted for from where it began, be patient. Things will eventually circle back.

I have a little sad and angry and happy and silly inside me every day.

And fun and excitement and imagination.

- My youngest, age 5

InspiroBot

Yes. You Are Dreadful.

From a protest sign that has been spreading widely on social media as a meme:

Treat racism like Covid-19:

assume you have it,

change your behavior, and

don't spread the disease

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The path isn't a straight line; it's a spiral.

You continually come back to

things that you thought you understood

and see deeper and deeper truths.

You want to go back to the start. You want to go back to where you began. You want to find the happiness you once had. But you can never get there, because even if you somehow found it, you yourself would be different. You would have changed, from your journey alone, from the passing of time, if nothing else. You can never make it back to where you began, you can only ever climb another turn of the spiral stair. Forever.

― Marcus Sedgwick, The Ghosts of Heaven

The son I quoted above, about having many different emotions every day, is a delight. From the time they were infants we've said if we had to come up with one word to describe our older son it would be "intensity" and the younger would be "joy." He loves to laugh and make others laugh, is the most social and empathetic of us, brings humor and optimism to all situations. He makes people happy.

Except when he's unhappy. Our older expresses misbehavior deviously. He's sneaky and doesn't want to get caught. He certainly doesn't want you to know he's breaking the rules. The younger, on the other hand, is defiant and destructive. He wants you to be fully aware that not only is he breaking the rule, he's trying to punish you for enforcing it. He turns misbehavior into a power struggle and never backs down from a power struggle. It can be extremely difficult do diffuse situations with him because he does his best to force you into dominating and breaking him if you don't want to let him get his way. We've had to work very hard and get very creative to find other ways to encourage acceptable behavior from him.

I want to share a review I haven't for the book Raising Human Beings: Creating a Collaborative Partnership with Your Child by Ross W. Greene

As I ponder what to say about this book, I'm reminded of two quotes I like from another, Difficult Conversations by Douglas Stone:

People almost never change without first feeling understood.

The single most important thing [you can do] is to shift [your] internal stance from "I understand" to "Help me understand." Everything else follows from that.

Though stated differently, those ideas lie at the core of the parenting approach Greene describes in this book. Parents can best help their children learn, change, and grow--and deal with difficulties and misbehavior--by starting with listening and empathy, then asking for the same in return. Together, parents and children try to fully understand the problem under discussion and craft a solution that addresses everyone's concerns. It is both a step-by-step, formulaic method to follow in each specific instance and a general framework for helping kids grow into respectful, independent, capable people.

Greene builds the framework over the course of the book, developing each step in turn with numerous examples of putting it into practice in different situations. He explores potential pitfalls and failures, and includes a question-and-answer section in each chapter. It's very approachable and easy to understand (though did not make the most scintillating audiobook listening). It's definitely something I would recommend for every parent, educator, and caregiver.

Really, it's something I would recommend for everyone. Though this is very specifically about parenting, not much extrapolation is needed to think of it as something for managers and supervisors, as the roles and scenarios are very similar. And even without the power-dynamic roles, the approach to communication in general is one everyone would benefit from--after all, one of Greene's implementation examples is between not a parent and child but two parents.

That's the first time I've mentioned that book on this blog. It's not the first time I've mentioned Ross Greene. I previously referenced him in It's Funny, a post worth reproducing entirely here.

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It's funny how motivation seems to be driven by the same factors regardless of circumstances.  Recently I was reading an article (more below) about children, schools, behavior, and discipline.  It included the following sentence: University of Rochester psychologist Ed Deci, for example, found that teachers who aim to control students' behavior—rather than helping them control it themselves—undermine the very elements that are essential for motivation: autonomy, a sense of competence, and a capacity to relate to others.

"Autonomy, a sense of competence, and a capacity to relate to others."  That seems awfully familiar.

Consider this, from Daniel Pink's website about his book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us: Drawing on four decades of scientific research on human motivation, Pink exposes the mismatch between what science knows and what business does—and how that affects every aspect of life. He demonstrates that while carrots and sticks worked successfully in the twentieth century, that’s precisely the wrong way to motivate people for today’s challenges. In Drive, he examines the three elements of true motivation—autonomy, mastery, and purpose—and offers smart and surprising techniques for putting these into action.

"Autonomy, a sense of competence, and a capacity to relate to others" vs. "Autonomy, mastery, and purpose."

Yes, quite familiar.

I've written: Workplace motivation is the same as school-based learning is the same as personal motivation is the same as independent learning is the same as reading pleasure and recreational activities and play and creating and coming to grips with all kinds of change, personal, institutional, and societal.  It's a process.  A personal investment.  A choice.  An action.  A journey to an outcome.  And if you try to skip that journey and head straight to the outcome, give people the answer without the process, none of it will amount to much of anything.

The more I see, the more I see the same.

The question remains: How to put it into action?

The question remains.

The source of my quote above, which includes much more about Drive and links to even more about Drive, is previous post Active, Not Passive; Autonomy, Not Subordination.  The source of the quote at the top from the recent article about children, schools, behavior, and discipline, along with more context, is:

What If Everything You Knew About Disciplining Kids Was Wrong?

Negative consequences, timeouts, and punishment just make bad behavior worse. But a new approach really works. . . . 

Contemporary psychological studies suggest that, far from resolving children's behavior problems, these standard disciplinary methods often exacerbate them. They sacrifice long-term goals (student behavior improving for good) for short-term gain—momentary peace in the classroom.

University of Rochester psychologist Ed Deci, for example, found that teachers who aim to control students' behavior—rather than helping them control it themselves—undermine the very elements that are essential for motivation: autonomy, a sense of competence, and a capacity to relate to others. This, in turn, means they have a harder time learning self-control, an essential skill for long-term success. Stanford University's Carol Dweck, a developmental and social psychologist, has demonstrated that even rewards—gold stars and the like—can erode children's motivation and performance by shifting the focus to what the teacher thinks, rather than the intrinsic rewards of learning. . . .

Under Greene's philosophy, you'd no more punish a child for yelling out in class or jumping out of his seat repeatedly than you would if he bombed a spelling test. You'd talk with the kid to figure out the reasons for the outburst (was he worried he would forget what he wanted to say?), then brainstorm alternative strategies for the next time he felt that way. The goal is to get to the root of the problem, not to discipline a kid for the way his brain is wired.

"This approach really captures a couple of the main themes that are appearing in the literature with increasing frequency," says Russell Skiba, a psychology professor and director of the Equity Project at Indiana University. He explains that focusing on problem solving instead of punishment is now seen as key to successful discipline.

If Greene's approach is correct, then the educators who continue to argue over the appropriate balance of incentives and consequences may be debating the wrong thing entirely. After all, what good does it do to punish a child who literally hasn't yet acquired the brain functions required to control his behavior?

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To fully circle spiral back . . . 

De-escalation Keeps Protesters And Police Safer. Departments Respond With Force Anyway.

Researchers have spent 50 years studying the way crowds of protesters and crowds of police behave — and what happens when the two interact. One thing they will tell you is that when the police respond by escalating force — wearing riot gear from the start, or using tear gas on protesters — it doesn’t work. In fact, disproportionate police force is one of the things that can make a peaceful protest not so peaceful. . . . 

There’s 50 years of research on violence at protests, dating back to the three federal commissions formed between 1967 and 1970. All three concluded that when police escalate force — using weapons, tear gas, mass arrests and other tools to make protesters do what the police want — those efforts can often go wrong, creating the very violence that force was meant to prevent. For example, the Kerner Commission, which was formed in 1967 to specifically investigate urban riots, found that police action was pivotal in starting half of the 24 riots the commission studied in detail. It recommended that police eliminate “abrasive policing tactics” and that cities establish fair ways to address complaints against police.

Experts say the following decades of research have turned up similar findings. Escalating force by police leads to more violence, not less. It tends to create feedback loops, where protesters escalate against police, police escalate even further, and both sides become increasingly angry and afraid. . . . 

It’s become normal in the U.S. for police departments to revert to tactics that amplify tensions and provoke protesters, Maguire said, including wearing intimidating tactical gear before its use would be warranted. Maguire does training for police officers and has tried, for years, to get buy-in on the idea that there could be a different way. “I have good relationships with police and I’ve been working with them for 25 years, and I’ve never experienced pushback like I do on this,” Maguire said.

De-escalation strategies definitely exist. Anne Nassauer, a professor of sociology at Freie Universität in Berlin, has studied how the Berlin Police Department handles protests and soccer matches. She found that one key element is transparent communication — something Nassauer said helps increase trust and diffuse potentially tense moments. The Berlin police employs people specifically to make announcements in these situations, using different speakers, with local accents or different languages, for things like information about what police are doing, and another speaker for commands. Either way, the messages are delivered in a calm, measured voice.

Communication is also a cornerstone of what police know as “the Madison Model,” created by former Madison, Wisconsin, chief of police David Couper. His strategy for dealing with protesters was to send officers out to talk with demonstrators, engage, ask them why protests are made, listen to their concerns and, above all, empathize. . . . 

It’s also just hard to change police culture. Maguire compared it to trying to change hospital procedures by using evidence-based medicine. Even if the evidence is, “don’t perform this surgery in that way or someone could die,” it can still take 20 years for the new technique to be widely adopted.

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There's a reason you separate military & the police.

One fights the enemies of the state, the other serves & protects the people.

When the military becomes both, then the enemies of the state tend to become the people.

- Bill Adama, Battlestar Galactica

NPR's History Podcast 'Throughline' Explores Policing In America

In this country, for the years that cover the 1600s to the mid-19th century, the most dominant presence of law enforcement was what we call today slave patrols. That's what made up policing. . . . 

And perhaps the most revealing aspect of the way slave patrols functioned is that they were explicit in their design to empower the entire white population with the duty to police movements of black people. So the tying together early on - the surveillance, the deputization, essentially, of all white men to be police officers or, in this case, slave patrollers and then to dispense corporal punishment on the scene are all baked in from the very beginning. . . . 

The 13th Amendment abolished slavery except as punishment for a crime. So in some ways, the genius of the former Confederate states was to say, oh, well, if all we need to do is make them criminals and they can be put back in slavery, well, then that's what we'll do. And that's exactly what the black codes set out to do. . . . 

In the decades following the Civil War, these codes were enforced by vigilante groups, like the Ku Klux Klan. This is partly what sparked the Great Migration, when millions of Southern blacks went north in search of better and safer lives. But what very few of these migrants could have known was that northern cities had been developing their own professional police forces. . . . 

Part of the context for early modern policing was that the immigrant population of Europeans, particularly the Irish, were generating a similar kind of social anxiety, xenophobic, nativist, racist reaction. The early emphasis on people whose status was just a tiny notch better than the folks who they were focused on policing. And so the Anglo-Saxons are policing the Irish. The Irish are policing the Poles. And so this dynamic that's playing out is that police officers are a critical feature of establishing a racial hierarchy, even among white people. . . . 

When a white person throws a Molotov cocktail into a new black homeowner on a street that had previously been all Irish or all Polish or all German, the police come, and they arrest the black family and defend the white mob. This happens over and over again. They are policing the racial norms of white supremacy from the very beginning in the north. And so what do these black folks do who are observing all this? They begin to write about it. W.E.B. Du Bois is writing for the NAACP magazine. He has essentially a police blotter, which systematically details all the examples of police brutality directed against African Americans everywhere.

The National Urban League begins to do systematic survey research. And they overwhelmingly see that police officers are doing, essentially, stop-and-frisk policing in the 1920s. Other researchers looked at this all over the country and began to come to the same conclusion - that these big cities had a systemic, massive policing problem. . . . 

In 1935, one of the leading black sociologists publishes a really poignant statement about what police officers represent to the black community. He says, too often, the policeman's club is the only instrument of the law with which the Negro comes into contact. This engenders in him a distrust and resentful attitude toward all public authorities and law officers. He's saying, look. Police officers are directly responsible for telling black people how much their lives don't matter in this society. . . . 

The irony about police professionalization that is occurring by the 1930s and will carry us into the 21st century is that part of police science begins to draw on crime statistics and sociological research about the innate or cultural tendencies of black people to criminality, which then legitimate racist notions of black people as a race of criminals. Part of this professionalization is to say, those are the only real criminals we have to worry about.

How Racist Policing Took Over American Cities, Explained by a Historian

The deliberate choice to abolish slavery, [except as] punishment for crime, leaves a gigantic loophole that the South attempts to leverage in the earliest days of freedom. What that amounts to is that all expressions of black freedom, political rights, economic rights, and social rights were then subject to criminal sanction. Whites could accuse black people who wanted to vote of being criminals. People who wanted to negotiate fair labor contracts could be defined as criminals. And the only thing that wasn’t criminalized was the submission to a white landowner to work on their land. . . . 

So it’s a cycle: Black people were incarcerated in the South, and because they were incarcerated, this whole theory that black people were criminal was built on top of that . . . 

Once we have the consolidation of the fact that crime statistics prove nationally, everywhere, that black people have a crime problem, the arguments for diminishing their equal citizenship rights are national. . . . 

The earliest days of the civil rights movement were focused on the problem of lynching. The NAACP literally begins because of lynching. . . . 

It was headquartered in New York. And so what was happening in their own backyards was more like systemic police violence than lynch mobs. And that began the process, particularly for W.E.B. Du Bois, who establishes kind of a police blotter, or let’s call it a police-brutality blotter, and the primary magazine for the organization.

Ida B. Wells, who was also another founder of the NAACP, begins to organize around police violence and other forms of racial violence in those cities. African Americans themselves start to resist policing and call attention. . . . 

 . . . the first blue-ribbon commission to study the causes of riots. In that report, the Chicago commission [concludes] that there was systemic participation in mob violence by the police, and that when police officers had the choice to protect black people from white mob violence, they chose to either aid and abet white mobs or to disarm black people or to arrest them. And a number of people testify, all of whom are white criminal justice officials, that the police are systematically engaging in racial bias when they’re targeting black suspects, and more likely to arrest them and to book them on charges that they wouldn’t do for a white man.

This report in 1922 should have been the death of systemic police racism and discrimination in America. It wasn’t. Its recommendations were largely ignored. . . . 

 . . . the Harlem riot report in 1935.

That report comes to the same conclusion, notes there needs to be accountability for police that need to be charged and booked as criminals when they engage in criminal activity. They call for citizen review boards and an end to stop and frisk, which they name in the report. And Mayor [Fiorello] La Guardia, the mayor of New York, shelves it, doesn’t do anything with it, doesn’t even share [it] with the public. The only reason it ever saw the light of day was because the black newspaper, the Amsterdam News, published it in serial form.

And a similar report is produced in 1943, and another report in 1968. They essentially all keep repeating the same problem. . . . 

I can tell you that a lot of the activists and movement leaders, the organizers, academics like myself, know that this has never been a problem about one, two, three, or four officers who unjustly kill an unarmed, innocent black person . . . 

The problem is the way policing was built and what it’s empowered to do, which is — to put it in terms that are resonant in this moment — they’ve been policing the essential workers of America. . . . 

What this moment leads us to is a crossroads for most newcomers to define justice beyond an individual case or even cases, but to define justice as a form of limiting what police officers have been able to do, which is to protect white privileges in America. Some people call that defunding the police. Some people call it abolition. But what it all means is that there should be less policing of black America and more investment in the [socioeconomic] infrastructure of black communities. And police officers are not the people to do that work.

What Does 'Defund the Police' Mean? The Rallying Cry Sweeping the US – Explained

For years, community groups have advocated for defunding law enforcement – taking money away from police and prisons – and reinvesting those funds in services. The basic principle is that government budgets and “public safety” spending should prioritize housing, employment, community health, education and other vital programs, instead of police officers. . . . 

The Covid-19 economic crisis has led cities and states to make drastic budget cuts to education, youth programs, arts and culture, parks, libraries, housing services and more. But police budgets have grown or gone largely untouched – until pressure from protests this week. . . . 

That can start with finding “non-police solutions to the problems poor people face”, such as counselors responding to mental health calls and addiction experts responding to drug abuse. . . . 

Abolition groups argue that policing and prison are at their core racist and harmful and make communities less safe. They also point out that the vast majority of police work has nothing to do with responding to or preventing violence, and that police have a terrible track record of solving murders or handling rape and domestic violence.

While there is no contemporary example of defunding in the US, there are studies suggesting that less policing could mean less crime. In 2014 and 2015, New York officers staged a “slowdown” to protest the mayor, arguing that if they did less police work, the city would be less safe. But the opposite turned out to be true. When the officers took a break from “broken windows policing”, meaning targeting low-level offenses, there was a drop in crime. Researchers posited that aggressive policing on the streets for petty matters can ultimately cause social disruption and lead to more crime. Policing that punishes poverty, such as hefty traffic tickets and debts, can also create conditions where crime is more likely. When New York ended “stop and frisk”, crime did not rise. . . . 

America’s legacy of racism and severe gun violence epidemic make it difficult to compare to other countries. But some have pointed out that compared to peer nations, the US spends significantly less on social services and more on public safety programs, and has astronomically higher incarceration rates. These investments in police and prison, however, don’t translate to a safer country. In fact, police in America kill more people in days than many countries do in years. 

A Practical Guide to Defunding the Police

Defunding the police does not mean stripping a department entirely of its budget, or abolishing it altogether. It’s just about scaling police budgets back and reallocating those resources to other agencies, says Lynda Garcia, policing campaign director at the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. “A lot of what we advocate for is investment in community services — education, medical access… You can call it ‘defunding,’ but it’s just about directing or balancing the budget in a different way.”

The concept is simple: When cities start investing in community services, they reduce the need to call police in instances when police officers’ specific skill set isn’t required. “If someone is dealing with a mental health crisis, or someone has a substance abuse disorder, we are calling other entities that are better equipped to help these folks,” Garcia says. 

When people get the specific help they need earlier, they’re less likely to end up in the kind of dangerous situation police might be called to defuse — situations that often turn deadly for those individuals. . . . 

Police themselves will admit this — that they are being called to respond to situations beyond the scope of their job. “We’re asking cops to do too much in this country,” Dallas Police Chief David Brown said in 2016 . . . 

The same logic, Garcia says, can and should be applied to nonviolent crimes as well — as it was before the “Broken Windows” era of policing, when the philosophy that small visible crimes must be punished or they’ll beget larger crimes became popular in police departments around the country. . . . 

If we reduce the number of crimes that exist or repeal ordinances which are really bloated with nonviolent offenses that were created during Broken Windows, it will allow police to focus on violent crime — on the crimes where they are actually needed — instead of criminalizing the poor.” . . . 

As a first epilogue, a timely bit of satire:

NRA Accidentally Forgets To Rise Up Against Tyrannical Government

An embarrassed National Rifle Association says it totally forgot to do the one thing it has been saying for years it is solely there to do.

“Our whole reason for lobbying for looser gun laws and amassing huge personal arsenals of weapons these past years was so that we could ensure the security of a free state and protect the people from an oppressive government. And then it actually happened, and the whole rising up against a tyrannical government thing just totally slipped our minds, which is a little embarrassing,” a sheepish NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre said.

He said the morale around the NRA has been pretty low. “The guys feel pretty silly. We had our well regulated militia stocked up and ready to go, just waiting for the moment when the Government would turn on its own people. And then the government started shooting protesters and rolling tanks down the street, and we were like ‘guys this is the one we’ve been talking about, let’s go!’. But then something else came up and we forgot to do it. Damnit!”.

Observers were shocked that the NRA had missed their opportunity to defend their country. “I can’t believe it,” one analyst said. “It’s almost as if they weren’t worried about the government at all. It’s as if they were actually just scared of black people”.

And for a second epilogue, a revisit to a bit of The Parent's Tao Te Ching by William Martin

32.

Rules Do Not Give Life

Rules do not give life.

The Tao gives life.

And the Tao is seen in butterflies

and in galaxies.

If children were trusted to discover God

in the center of their own hearts

the world would be at peace.

But we have made systems of rules

and institutions of control.

Accept this as the way things are

but always recognize the limitations of rules,

and the dangers of institutions.

Rules can guide a child but cannot define that child.

Institutions can nurture a child

but cannot bring that child to maturity.

*

For a short while,

when your children are young,

you may be able to coerce good behavior.

But goodness of the heart

can never be coerced.

In can only be encouraged

or discouraged.

Consider your family's rules,

spoken and unspoken.

Who made them?

Who benefits from them, and how?

Do they encourage

or discourage your children?

-----

49.

Giving Respect

When your children behave,

give them respect and kindness.

When your children misbehave,

give them respect and kindness.

When they are hateful,

love them.

When they betray your trust,

trust them.

The River of Life nurtures

everything it touches,

without asking for anything.

You will be happy and content

if you do the same.

*

Believe this difficult truth.

Showing respect in the face of disrespect,

love in the face of hate,

trust in the face of betrayal,

and serenity in the face of turmoil,

will teach your children more

than all the moral lectures

by all the preachers

since the dawn of time.