WHITE SUPREMACY'S STRUCTURE AND POLICE BRUTALITY

Sometimes I hear white anti-racists say they think that police are on the front lines of maintaining white supremacist culture. But I think that's a type of cop out. (Pun intended) White culture built on white history is on the front lines of maintaining white supremacist culture. Cops are simply the most visible part of it.

Imagine America being made up of 1000s and 1000s of cheerleader pyramids. Imagine that these human pyramids are built just like they are in real life, everybody starting off on the ground climbing on top of others, working cooperatively to build a solid structure in the same way you build many elements of a society.

The people at the base of each pyramid represent the general population. People in the middle can fill all sorts of middle management life slots.But in this case, let's imagine that a cop is that individual that made it to the top of each cheerleader pyramid. The thing to keep in mind is that the person who decided to be a police officer started on the ground just like the rest of the cheerleaders. So if the cops at the top is a white supremacist that's because he came from a field of white supremacists. He or she wasn't plucked from another planet and placed on top by God.

In other words, police officers are a product of their culture. They are born. They are created. They follow. They don't lead.

If a black woman like myself was drawing similar human pyramids to describe white supremacy in 1715, it's likely she could tell you more precisely which section of the white population each layer of people represents more precisely.

- The bottom layer would be the poor white farmers, who own no slaves, the ones who wonders if they will eat grass when the crops don't come in. This is the white person whose only item of value is his white skin. And feeling superior to blacks they will report runaway slaves as quickly as possible for the personal satisfaction when he can only hope for a reward. 

-The next layer up in 1715 might be the overseers, who don't own slaves either. This layer might also contain neighbors that rent or borrow slaves as well as bankers that take slaves as collateral.

- By the 1830s the layer after that would have a sizable percentage of northern white abolitionists who abhor the stories of beatings, rape, and torture associated with slavery but have never one thought of black people as being their equals. These are the white supremacists who favor peacefully getting along until blacks can be sent back to Africa. 

-The slave owners would be the ones held in place at the top of pyramid.

The point is that not everyone owns slaves in the 1715 human, white supremacy, pyramids. Yet nearly every white someone is a part of the structure and benefits in some way. Even the poorest white person can repeat to himself what the rich white man has told him, "I may be dirt poor, but at least I'm not black." All components are part of holding the slave owners steady at the top. Three hundred years later, in 2015, the white supremacy structure is constructed in the same way. Cops are at the top of many pyramids, but they aren't lonely up there. White supremacy embracing judges, elected officials, bankers, and corporation giants are also being held steady at the top

--and there's the occasional Dylann Foot that slips out from the bottom and scrambles high enough that he too can lash out -- just like some of the cops. 

Again, white culture is the leading edge of white supremacy with police forces across the U.S. being the most visible.

And police officers are visible because they are the ones that are hands-on, the ones in charge of making sure black people remember their place, using violence so erratically that everyone with dark skin is terrorized whether they've been personally abused or not.

By the way... It's no accident that I chose these particular cheerleader pyramids to represent the thousands of cheerleader pyramids of my metaphorical America. There are black or brown people in each pyramid because the Ben Carsons and Clarence Thomases as well as black and brown cops have to do their part in order for white supremacy to remain solid and intact.

The Bens and Clarences are necessary as they decrease the chances of white supremacy recognizing itself in the mirror.
Example 1: Old Style Lynching

If every single black agrees that thing X is racist, there's no room for white denial to exist in regards to thing X.
Lynch mobs don't go to jails and drag black men out of jails anymore. There has always been agreement among black people to the tune of 100%, that this is a racist, undesirable act. But lynching dropped off when black people were able to spread the news that lynching was being done based on blackness and not the rape of white women. When there was no more room for anybody, including black people, to say that lynching was sometimes justified, there weren't any black people for white racists to hide behind. Therefore there was very, very little room for white denial. Straight-up, out-and-out lynching pretty much stopped. Example 2: New Style Lynching
If a white cop shoots a black person that ran away from him, there's room for doubt as to the motive. And that doubt can come from anybody regardless of complexion. But if this same event happens (white cop shoots unarmed black person) 100,000 of times in a row, then most black people will likely say there's a pattern of racism. But there's always a small percentage blacks that will look at the same pattern of 100,000 shootings and say there's some doubt that the pattern indicates racism. And this small percentage of black provide cover for huge swaths of white denial. This is why Faux News loves to hear people like Don Lemon say things like, "Well, if Trayvon hadn't been wearing a hoodie maybe..."

There must be some small percentage of black and brown cooperation with most forms of white supremacy in order for white supremacy to remain cloaked and hidden from the people executing that white supremacy.

The thing that's different about the cop at the top of all of these pyramids that make up my America-- other than the fact that he or she carries a gun regularly-- is that some of these people that become police are of the aggressive, bully-type personality. This almost has to be why (male?) police officers are reported to beat their significant others at a rate twice the "normal" population. And I've read at least one article that said police rates of domestic violence are 4x as high in cop families as the general population.

Excess aggression in our police force is a problem for everyone, but especially those perceived as weaker. The aggressive bully is someone who CANNOT handle authority. He or she lives to abuse the socially weaker (black, brown, homeless, and women) But the good news is that these people CAN BE weeded out via:

1) Psychological Testing

Of course you want to get rid of the racists and sexists if you can, but did you see Supertrooper, run, drop, and roll, then keep running after CHILDREN at a pool party?

Did you see the bullet wound mock up for Malissa Williams and Timothy Russell? Officer Michael Brelo STOOD ON A CAR HOOD and shot down into them --dividing 15 or 16 bullets between these two black people. One bullet looks like it almost entered the top of Russell's head. The photo here is incredible.

(http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/05/30/brelo-shooting-judge-erro_n_7476676.html)

 I refuse to believe this 1970s movie super-cop cowboy b.s. cannot be identified by a psych exam.

2) Increasing required education levels (Studies appear to show that an educated cop is a less violent cop. (http://www.psmag.com/politics-and-law/cops-and-college-do-police-need-book-smarts-21852)

3) Refusing to hire or fire anybody who hits his spouse. (http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Police-domestic-violence-nearly-twice-average-rate-2536928.php)

And we can get rid of some of the bad apples already inside law enforcement by A) National Tracking of death in police custody - especially those that die unarmed. A bill has already been proposed. We need to get more vocal about this. B) Create state requirements to decrease the rank of or fire supervisors along with the cop when there are repeated reports of police brutality involving the same or the same few officers under his or her command. C) Finding ways at the state level to immediately remove Judges from the bench when they refuse to follow the law if a police officer is accused. We need to find a way to quickly vote or petition these judges into some sort of inactive/unpaid status while an investigation into their decision is conducted. These kinds of changes will benefit everyone, but making things more concrete and quantitative will disproportionally benefit black people. Subjectivity is dominant culture's friend and our enemy. But before any of this can happen, we need to convince a lot of members at the base that this is necessary.
The people at the base of these pyramids are the ones that will have to assist in most of this voting and demanding. People of color are only 1/4 to 1/3 of the population and hardly united. But so far, it appears that most of the base thinks that the capitalistic, white supremacist culture is working out just fine. And I'm starting to think that the base is going to continue to think everything's jake until 1% or 0.5%or 0.25% of those cops at the top of the pyramid start taking pot shots at white people that aren't poor and/or homeless. But I hope it doesn't have to come to this.
I hope white anti-racists will come to realize that sifting the hard-core white racists from the white willfully ignorant and making what changes they can is their job. And I hope we can help by destabilizing these white supremacy pyramids via yanking the Carsons and Lemons out of them wherever we can.



Pssst!  So why does Lemon still have a job, anyway? For the most part, we don't like him. So why aren't we calling to tell CNN they aren't getting any diversity points for his @$$? We can't be so desperate to see black faces on television that we'll just take ANYBODY. It's 2015.