Over at Afronerd they’re discussing the Queen brutality case. Their ideological line is very far from mine, but I am not interested in that as much as I am interested in what flows from that. How does a moderate conservative ideological perspective alter their conception of this incident?
They note the following:
1) Policing is a stressful, difficult and dangerous job that no sane person wants to do.
2) Police officers (some who are also persons of color) have been killed in the line of duty leaving families (like the victim’s in this case) orphaned and widowed. The key difference is that Sharpton, to my knowledge has not shown up for cases like these.
3) And of course, you do have reprehensible cases of police misconduct and corruption.
And black/Latino communities have to keep in mind the following (some context deleted for space reasons):
1) The police have to discern who has criminal intent in an atmosphere that idolizes rebel behavior thanks to commercial hip hop imagery. Gone are the days when the heroes and villians wore opposing color schemes. Now there are legions of Black and Brown youth, whose fashion sense and mannerisms mimic those comprised of the thug element. Many are not criminals but (a la 50 cent) how is one to tell the difference between a gangsta and a wanksta.
2) Not only do you have a street culture that has risen to mythic proportions but also street ethics that manifest in “stop snitchin'” policies-the ghetto version of the Italian omerta.
3) And lastly, we have a youth culture that unfortunately fulfill the stereotypes that have been ascribed to them. In the Bell case, all three parties had numerous arrests for drug and weapon charges in the past.
Questions:
- When the writers say “of course there are some reprehensible cases of police misconduct” what do they mean? Are they saying that this is a part of the job? That we should except misconduct as routine? How is this misconduct distributed? Are Manhattan socialites as likely to be the victim of misconduct as Puerto Rican working class men? If not, why not?
- If no sane person would take the job of the police, then are we to believe that the police are in fact, insane?
- The three aspects of black/Latino life they focus on are modern in nature. Is police brutality against communities of color a modern phenomenon?
- Did the police know about Bell’s record before he was shot and killed? Is this why they sought to stop him?
If we don’t take into account the stated purpose of the police, as well as the historical trajectory of their development vis a vis black communities, then it is very easy to take Afronerd’s point of view. But if we take into account the fact that police are paid by our taxes to protect us, then the first viewpoint we should think about are those of the citizens they are supposed to protect. Further if we understand that police misconduct is not a “natural” part of the job, in as much as it is targeted towards certain populations, and that this misconduct is not a modern response to hip-hop, then rather than taking some brutality for granted (and blaming it on hip-hop), we’d likely take a more sensible approach to crime fighting and to police behavior.
Now there are legions of Black and Brown youth, whose fashion sense and mannerisms mimic those comprised of the thug element. Many are not criminals but (a la 50 cent) how is one to tell the difference between a gangsta and a wanksta.
That one is so not an excuse for anything. Not that any of them are, although it is interesting to watch Black Conservatives tie themselves in knots attempting to justify this police action.
Still, just recently I lived along the route kids walked to get to the neighborhood high school. The area was very multicultural, and some mornings I would just watch the kids go by. Black, White, Chinese, Hmong, Latino, etc… and in that way that kids have of establishing their uniqueness, their own identity, their own sense of “cool” (or whatever it is called today), they all (or many, anyway) dressed alike. Gangstas, wankstas, whateverstas, the hip hop “thug” imagery abounded.
Not only is it truly insane to suggest that shooting people because of their clothing choices (no matter how much you may deplore their fashion sense) is somehow acceptable, but singling out only Black or Brown youths as those for whom it might actually be justifiable is just – well…
Not that I want White or Asian youths to be shot either, of course. Just for Black or Brown ones to be given the same benefit of the doubt as they are, under similar circumstances. We are very far from that point, though.
Amen. All I want to know is…when did this start? If they dress like this NOW, then what caused Watts in 65? Detroit in 67? LA in 92? Miami? Cincinatti? The list goes on and on….
I think something that is also missed in a critique of youth fashion trends tending towards the “gangsta”, or whatever such nonsense, is that there are large multi-racial, multi-ethnic groupings who are dressing alike. Isn’t this a good thing?
In a country where we have a history of being torn apart by our racial differences isn’t anything that points to breaking down those differences, even if it is only fashion, a good thing?
I don’t know it seems as if the folks over at afronerd and black conservatives in general are playing a dangerous card in bemoaning issues like this so much.
Among folks who do heavy research on white nationalists there is a lot going around right now about how the nationalists are looking towards the year 2050 as the projected date when there will be no clear majority, i.e. white people won’t be able to control things based on a simple voting majority anymore. This creates two distinct possibilities:
1) white folks repudiate their whiteness and join the rest of humanity (which I think hip hop dress and culture point to a willingness and even a proactive desire to do this)
or 2) all the “races” retreat into their own blocs and we have some kind of Yugoslavia type of stuff going down.
I’ll let you decide which option the white nationalists are attempting to lay the groundwork for, they welcome a race war a la The Turner Diaries. And I think that by so vehemently opposing this development within “their people” afronerd and black conservatives are unconsciously playing right into this hand. Again a dangerous game.
Les,
To me, and I have said this to the folks at Afronerd, it is about appeasing to traditional notions of white beauty and dress. Of course, as Nanette states above, the conventional standards of beauty, fashion, and ultimately, racial indentity are being challenged by the younger generation today via hip-hop. Because of this, more and more young Americans are finding that they are more alike, and consciously struggling to be more alike with one another than different.
But for Afronerd, despite their contesting, hip-hop is the vehicle by which black folks keep themselves hamstrung economically, politically, culturally, etc. Instead, they propose that black folks need to stop dressing “black”, to stop making themselves look bad (to white people), to relinquish their so-called victimology (meanwhile ignoring the historical implications for it) and pull themselves up by the proverbial bootstraps.
The same argument that Afronerd levels against black people is the same argument that white nationalists have been espousing since segregation and prior; black folks are universally responsible for their condition in society; as if they are a homogenous gene pool independent from American social relations.
Odd as it sounds, I’m not interested as much in the white nationalist response here. I am interested in getting people to unpack their notions of what is happening “now”. I said as much in the entry…if police are “now” profiling black people because of the way they dress, how we to explain how police behaved “then”?
From the Archives: Afronerd on the NYC Brutality case http://t.co/vhsLBsJe