Squaring the blame on police is avoiding accountability.
I’m instantly suspicious of white people that point fingers at police officers, calling them pigs, and blaming them for all racism that exists in the world, because it seems to me to be a way of avoiding accountability.
As far as I know, when you become a police officer, you aren’t initiated a special club for racists, you aren’t transplanted into a National Front training camp out in Peterborough, or a KKK chapter out in Pittsburgh, you aren’t turned into a racist.
The reason racism in the police force, especially in America, is so glaringly obvious, and so pertinent, is more to do with inordinate amount of power men with guns, and indeed, men with batons and arresting rights possess.
Black children are more likely to be punished at school than white children - I don’t see white people writing posts about racist pig school teachers? Indeed, many an ethnic minority I’ve spoken to has agreed that, as a male person of colour, teachers seem more keen to notice your shortcomings, and to see you as a problem child.
Do teachers join police officers in this training camp?
Studies conducted upon doctors in their practice show similar results, they take the ailments and complaints of BME patients less seriously than they do of white patients, and provide less satisfactory care. BME defendents are more likely to go to jail for the same crime as white defendents, and when white defendents do go to jail, BME defendents get longer sentences for the same crime.
Systemic and institutional racism.
BME graduates, within a few years of graduating with the same degree, earn less, and indeed, it has been shown that you are less likely to be called for an interview if you have a BME name but an otherwise identical job application.
So my question is, do police officers, teachers, doctors, judges, recruitment consultants, and employers all secretly belong to the National Front and the KKK, or is it perhaps something different?
The police force don’t breed racism, society does, and as such, the police force becomes institutionally and systematically racist. Racism is constituted, reconstituted and replicated in every day action, in the smallest of biases, prejudices, and actions, that, when bound together, create the crises that we saw with George Floyd, Mark Duggan, and Yassar Yaqub.
The answer is not simply to hold individual officers to account as ‘bad eggs’ because that will never solve the problem - hold yourself to account.
(This isn’t a police apologist post so please don’t read it that way, because to do so would be wilful misinterpretation)