Amos Wilson: Black Perceptions of White Law Enforcement

From [HERE] and [HERE] The contradictions discussed above are further complicated by the fact that many African Americans justifiably perceive the police force principally as an alien, hostile, colonial/imperialistic constabulary deployed against them. The force's reasons for being in the African American community is seen as that of maintaining the racist status quo through intimidation of the local Black populace, reinforcing stereotypical racist attitudes, prerogatives, and power, protection of property (particularly that owned by alien landlords and merchants), rather than people. It appears more concerned with containing crime within the African American community rather than preventing it. Many African American communities suspect the police of corruptly cooperating with certain criminal elements, particularly drug dealers and petty racketeers, of being "on the pad" to those elements as well as sponsoring those elements directly thereby abetting the criminality they are allegedly there to eradicate.

When police personnel demonstrate racist contempt for the people, they are supposed to protect — whose servants they are supposed to be — it is not difficult to imagine their lack of zealous and unbiased enforcement of the laws. A racist police force is vulnerable to corruption by local criminals whose activities are seen by it as only impacting on a race and population they care very little for, if not hate: a race and population they view as essentially subhuman, criminal, and not worthy of respect. Under these circumstances the police and the African American community perceive each other as the enemy. Their relationship becomes characterized by acrimony and mutual distrust.

For many African Americans the police are "the law." Police and the laws they are supposed to enforce are synonymous. When the police arbitrarily and along racist lines, enforce or ignore the laws, when they personalize law enforcement or violate the letter and spirit of the laws they are supposed to uphold, the populace loses respect for the police and the law. Viewing the police and "the law" as one and the same means that loss of respect for the police is synonymous to loss of respect for "the law." If the police are held in contempt, so are the laws they ostensibly represent or with which they are associated.

The laws will not be respected merely because they have been approved by the appropriate societal institutions and according to constitutional procedures. To be effectively respected they must be perceived as morally correct, honestly motivated, as not designed to protect and rationalize racial and/or class privilege and power, and enforced without bias. This has not been the case in regard to the laws and law enforcement relative to African Americans. African Americans have seen the laws and the law enforcement establishment be used to deny them their constitu¬tional, civil and human rights. They have seen "the law" and its enforcers take sides with reactionary White American communi¬ties and join with those communities in hypocritically and blatantly violating their own legal and moral codes to maintain racial advantages. Not only has the African American community suffered emotionally from the violations by Whites of their own moral and legal codes; they have witnessed the writing and enforcement of laws which are specifically designed and passed to facilitate their domination and exploitation, their humiliation and degradation, their subordination and dehumanization, by the White American community. This historical and contemporary situation has bred contempt for laws and authorities, for social mores and etiquette, and motivated open, rebellious subversion of these entities by certain relatively small but influential elements of the African American community. It has reinforced criminal contempt and activity in many youth and young adults because of the pleasure derived from outwitting the laws and their enforcers, laws promulgated and enforced by outsiders and enemies and therefore only to be obeyed by "squares" and "chumps." Prestige is thereby gained in the eyes of unsophisti­cated Black youth by Black-on-Black criminals who in their perverted ways dare to challenge racist White supremacy as represented by the laws and authorities, even if such unthinking subversion, resistance and rebellion may ultimately prove to be self-defeating, self-destructive, wrongheaded and pointless.