Throughout social media over the last couple of days there have been posts condemning all cops as racists and murderers as well as posts who say that all police officers should not be grouped with those who behave so abhorrently.
My position is that there are many honorable police officers who should not be grouped with those that are murdering people just for being Black. I totally understand that there are people with a different perspective on this issue, I do not pretend for one second that their thinking is wrong, but I want to share my thoughts and perspective. I have known many excellent, compassionate, well-trained, unprejudiced, and peaceful police officers and I appreciate how they put their lives on the line for us every day. I do not believe that all police officers are racist.
Having said that, I find it interesting that we see a racist police system as a stand alone entity within this issue, that somehow police officers murdering black people begins and ends with being a police officer. I absolutely believe that our country is a racist country and that there are a multitude of racist systems within this larger entity that feed into this disgusting phenomenon. It is the overall racist society that is responsible for creating an environment where law enforcement can terrorize Black people and it is tolerated.
Our education system is racist. Our economy is racist. Our healthcare system is racist. Our politics are racist. Our response in a pandemic is racist. Access to food is racist. Our employment structure is racist. This country was built on the foundation of racism and it still exists today; honestly, may be worse today than ever because now we try to act like it’s not racist because of all the “protections” we have in place to make sure it doesn’t occur. Let me tell you, those safeguards have failed miserably for the Black people they are intended to protect.
As an educator, I think it is best if I break down my thoughts on our education system as that is where I have the greatest perspective. When I tell educators we have an education system that is racist, many immediately come back with “Are you calling me a racist?”. Then I say, “No, I’m saying the system is racist”. That’s not even up for argument, look at the data for Black students in schools. Graduation rates, literacy rates, gaps in achievement, office referrals and suspensions and expulsions, family engagement, the list goes on and on. Am I a racist because I work in a system that is racist? I have certainly worked with educators I believe to be racist; sometimes overtly and sometimes in the shadows; but I have encountered many educators who also believe the education system is racist and work tirelessly to make it better. How do we separate the individual people who work in a system that is racist and determine that the individual isn’t responsible for the racism, the system is?
What I do know is that I do not hear people yelling “F*** the Educators!” in the streets even though the lack of meaningful access to a quality education system is to me the greatest crime that is inflicted on Black people. An excellent education system for ALL is the great equalizer and, by providing an inequitable system of learning, we decide students’ whole life for them based on their race. And, don’t even go there with the “it’s about being poor, not about being Black”. There is an extensive research study (http://www.equality-of-opportunity.org/assets/documents/race_paper.pdf) that shows that poor White boys outperform affluent Black boys in this country. An overview can be found in this article https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/3/21/17139300/economic-mobility-study-race-black-white-women-men-incarceration-income-chetty-hendren-jones-porter and it debunks what many of us have believed for a long time to be true.
So, I’m not going to believe that every police officer is a racist murderer because they work in a racist law enforcement system any more than I would blame every doctor for our racist healthcare system or every financial planner because our country’s financial system is racist. But, I also think it is imperative that all of us change our relationship with the racist systems we work within, that we go far beyond facebook posts and participation in protests to a place where we say LOUDLY, “This practice we are implementing is going to negatively impact Black people and I am going to fight vehemently and will not stop until we have a different way of doing this work”.
And, we do this if it makes the people around us uncomfortable, we do this if it puts us at risk of losing our employment, we do this in front of our children and on behalf of all children, we support others who are battling to change the entirety of our racist system, and we acknowledge the pain and suffering Black people have, and are, experiencing and recognize and support the legitimacy of their anger and despair.
Additional Note: I went down a rabbit hole trying to determine if I should use the words “people of color” vs. “Black”. After reading many, many articles I chose to use the word “Black”. Here is one of the articles I read that helped me to make this decision https://level.medium.com/we-should-stop-saying-people-of-color-when-we-mean-black-people-29c2b18e6267.
