Mar 8, 20217 min read

Address the Disconnect Series 2: Systemic Racism in Policing

The History of Legalized Discrimination and Police Abuse of Power

Since the inception of police forces in America, they have been used as the overseer of maintaining minority oppression. In this article I will explore the idea of police in this country and how they brutality played a hand in some of America’s deadliest riots and greatest calls for change.

By: Ally Christiani | @alllycatttt | achristiani.black@gmail.com

In 2020, the word “slave patrols” became the new buzzword in discussions about police brutality. The common refute to those who were disbelieving of systemic racism existing in police forces was, “well historically, before there were police there was slave patrols who caught and returned slaves to their owners.” Therefore explaining, that there was never a time when the police were not acting in a racist fashion because since their inception, their attitudes were against minorities and the only thing that changed was the uniform and salary.

This historical detail was brand new to many people. I remember explaining it to my father one night at the dinner table. At the time, I had just begun my studies on American history, and my father, who is not a fan of misguided opinions not rooted in facts, scrutinized my statements with legitimate questions I did not, at the time, have answers to.

“Was the concept of police a direct descendent of slave patrols?” “Wasn’t there already a watch system existing in England that was brought to its colonies of Canada and the US?”

So most importantly, this article is for my dad, because I finally did the research.

Prior to the black codes (laws imposed after the Civil War to maintain oppression of newly freed slaves), there were the slave codes. Slaves, seen only as property and not human beings, were not provided with any legal rights or protections and these codes were the tools to maintain this rule of subordination. Most of these laws were passed in the early 1700’s in response to the fears of slave owners of possible revolts and uprisings. In 1740, South Carolina passed a new slave code called the Negro Act of 1740 in response to the Stono Rebellion that limited and prohibited many behaviors of slaves including reading, writing, gathering in groups, and growing their own food.

Slave patrols were created in response to the increase in runaways and almost successful uprisings. The first slave patrols began in South Carolina to help enforce their new slave codes that soon spread to the surrounding Southern states. They were groups of white volunteers who used violent and abusive tactics to maintain the “law.” Slave patrols gained more power after the passing of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793, which furthered the control of the slave-holding States much to the irritation of the Northern States that were moving towards abolition. This Act not only allowed slave patrols to forcefully enter anyone’s home to uncover possible runaways, but required any person or State to ensure the return of runaways to their respective owner or else, face legal consequences.

In the 1790’s we begin to see the first structure of policing modeled after the “watchmen” that existed in England. Known as the Charleston City Watch and Guard, this group of volunteers was specifically tasked with maintaining the slave population and preserve the peace of mind of white people against slave revolts.

In 1831, Nat Turner led one of the biggest slave rebellions in history, the premise of the 2016 film Birth of a Nation. In response, slave patrols increased in quantity, and in brutality. The rebellion, and those that occurred before it, served as the beginning towards an attitude of justifying black people as “criminals,” which is a label interchangeable with guilt, no matter their innocence.

“The notion of criminality in the broadest sense has to do with slave rebellions and uprisings, the effort of black people to challenge their oppression in the context of slavery.”

From the slave patrols, we look to the period in the 1830’s where the creation of a police force begins formally in the city of Boston. The only difference is they were now publicly funded and recognized. Other States followed suit, and by the 1890’s every major city had a police force.

The criminality association towards black people persisted past the Emancipation Proclamation in 1865. The South maintained the criminality of black people by introducing a new set of laws and restrictions called black codes. As laws evolved to preserve the racial hierarchy, so did the purpose of policing to adhere to them. The black codes, were quickly outlawed by the 13th and 14th Amendments along with the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which allowed them to then grow into the laws of Jim Crow. These laws legalized discrimination across the South and most of the North. Segregated “separate but equal” schools, various public spaces, and public transportation. Even as much as not crossing the street diligently when a white person was approaching would earn you a spot in a jail cell. The slave patrols began to police and particularly in the South, that meant implementing segregation and turning their backs to violent acts against the black community, including lynching. The Klu Klux Klan was formed in this era as well, and infiltrated politics and the newly forming police forces.

“I don’t think that there are single, isolated turning points that made policing more racist so much as it was a slow-moving process by which the idea that black people needed to be surveilled and harassed and abused more than other groups did, became increasingly absorbed as everyday logic and practice by police”. – Simon Balto, assistant professor of African American History at the University of Iowa.

It became an obvious cycle. New laws enacted that infringed upon obvious civil rights but nevertheless were enforced so emphatically, that it created the concept of mass criminalization which is the predecessor to mass incarceration. This notion of criminality becoming the justification for segregation and ultimately an incarceration rate far greater than the rest of the world.

At multiple points throughout history, from well beyond the years of slavery, black people campaigned and rioted for basic human rights, and the police were sure to be there siding with the oppressor and subduing the oppressed.

When the lynching’s persisted in Reconstruction, there was no service or protection afforded to those victims, no justice at all. Instead, you would witness police officers in photographs taken at these lynching sites, when they just occurred (often sold on postcards) maintaining the bustling crowd and ensuring the safety of the murderers. Yet, somehow the question resumes in modern day, why is there such a strain and mistrust between the police and black communities, as if the trauma is unjustified.

“In the South, police were less on the front lines because there were fewer of them. There was more vigilante enforcement of white supremacy: A white man really could shoot a black man or woman down in the middle of the street and get away with it.”

At the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement was the start of the NAACP that began in response to the lynching’s increase in fervor. One of its founders, Ida B. Wells, took upon the task of addressing and organizing around police brutality and racial violence. Her organizing brought about the first blue ribbon commission in 1922 which studied the reason for riots. It detailed painfully apparent conclusions based on witness testimony from white criminal justice officials and police arrest data. The conclusions were that there was “systemic participation” in mob violence by police, and when officers had a choice as to whether “protect black people from white mob violence, they chose to either aid and abet white mobs or to disarm black people or to arrest them.” The recommendations made from this Commission were ignored.

In 1929, another Commission came forward, this time conducted by the President, Herbert Hoover. Wickersham Commission investigated crime related to prohibition (majority by white men), which included a volume on lawlessness by police officers where means of torture was a common practice. President Hoover declared a “war on crime,” which, like all the other “wars” the future Presidents will declare, naturally disproportionately affected black people when the original criminal for which the war was declared (commonly the white man), suffered far less. This “war on crime” saw the beginning of the militarization of police forces, federally funded and supported by the exact machinery used by the US military. This was later expanded into what we see today, by President Lyndon B. Johnson, President Nixon, and President Bill Clinton, all in response to Nixon’s declaration of the “war on drugs.” Standard war equipment used to battle on international grounds, now in the hands of the less experienced or trained to use against their citizens on domestic soil. Sometimes, as far as being used during an eviction or misdemeanor drug bust.

A former Nixon domestic policy advisor, John Ehrlichman later confirmed that the effort was intended to harm black communities.

“The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying. We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.” he told Harper’s Magazine.

During the Civil Rights Era, the line between the police and their care or notice of their abuses of powers and brutality grew thinner and lethally, more red.

Dogs, fire hoses, tear gas, batons, and gunfire, were used against protestors in some of the most infamous riots of the Civil Rights Era. In 1937, 10 protestors killed at Republic Steel Plants when workers were fighting for more just labor contracts. In 1965, the Watts Riots ensued in response to tensions growing between the black community in Los Angeles and the police that monitored them daily, 34 people died. The Long Hot Summer saw the Newark Riots, the Detroit Riots and 157 more around the country where tensions reached a peak and a tipping point. More than 100 people died.

53 years past that time, 2020 saw its own version of a Long, Hot Summer. Yet it is the Obama-generation bred version of myself that sees hope in it not being another consequential tipping point, but a boiling over, and a burning of the old like the way lava destroys soil before rebirthing into ash. The past, as important as it is to commemorate, must be in a sense burned to make room for what can possibly be the next and most important phase of the Civil Rights Era. I have always indicated my fascination with history with the attribution to the fact that it repeats itself, however in this instance, I do believe in the permanency of the moment and the fortitude birthed in those whose ancestors suffered the most. This time, we’ll find a way to get it right.

Sources:

#Slavery #police #EmancipationProclamation #BirthofaNation #systemicracism #KluKluxKlan #CivilWar #PoliceBrutality #NegroAct #CivilRights

Address the Disconnect Series 2: Systemic Racism in Policing

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