| Coming to a neighborhood near you
The Los Angeles Police Department's reputation among people of color has not improved much in the years since the Rodney King beating. In 1998, the Rampart scandal revealed evidence of beatings, shakedowns, illegal shootings, and planted evidence--shady police activities that had been going on for at least a year. The problem of police misconduct, however, is not unique to southern California. Three years ago in New York, four white police officers shot an unarmed African immigrant nineteen times in a flurry of forty-one bullets. The immigrant, Amadou Diallo, a student and sidewalk vendor, had been reaching to draw something from his pocket--his wallet. The police officers didn't lose their jobs. They spent not a day in jail. The message to black people? Sorry. Better luck next time. Last April, a black nineteen-year-old in Cincinnati, Ohio, was shot to death after fleeing from police. He had been wanted for motor vehicle violations. The black community, outraged, protested in the streets. He was the fourth black man killed by Cincinnati police in five months--the fifteenth since 1995. Even suburban areas like Prince Georges County, Maryland, cannot escape inexplicable police violence. The Washington Post recently reported that from 1990 through 2000, the police in Prince Georges County killed more people per officer than any large police force in the country. Since 1990, they have shot 122 people and killed forty-seven of them. Almost half weren't armed and many had committed no crime. Eighty-four percent of those who were shot were black--even though blacks are just 60 percent of the county population. Black folks wonder if four black officers could have shot a white immigrant nineteen times, claimed they had reacted out of fear, and stayed on the job. But our minds can't imagine such a scenario. We know we live in a nation of double standards. Study after study has shown that black people are more likely to be incarcerated than whites when we commit the same crimes and have identical criminal histories. We are paid less than whites when we have the same skills. We are less likely to get mortgages when we have the same income and credit rating. We get worse medical care even when we have the same type of insurance and the same income. We would like to think that justice is blind but our lives show us that justice sees color. And the color white is preferred. So when black folks erupt in rage, whites should understand that we are tired of being mistreated. We are tired of the double standards. We are tired of the abuse. We are sick of the racism. For 250 years, we were owned by whites and exploited to build the wealth of this nation. More than a century after we won our freedom, we are often still treated like chattel. Under slavery, a master would not go to jail for beating and killing his slaves. Is that how it works today, we wonder? Police brutality is clearly a national problem. So should anyone be surprised when the next uprising happens? As long as we live in a country that locks black folks out of decent jobs, traps them in the most overburdened schools, and targets them for criminal prosecution, can we expect anything but racial conflict? Until America is ready to address the problem, we might as well sit tight and wait for the flames to rise. React >
Coming to a neighborhood near you |