Review Essay (“On Race, Cops, Fake News, and the True Inconvenient Truth: An Anti-Racist Manifesto”)

La Tanya Skiffer
Department of Sociology, CSUDH
First Reviewer

A society that protects some people through a safety net of schools, government-backed home loans, and ancestral wealth but can protect you only with the club of criminal justice has either failed at enforcing its good intentions or succeeded at something much darker. (Coates, 2015: 17).

Contrary to the author's contentions, there is nothing new about the perspective espoused in this article. Fear of the other has been a hallmark of American life since its founding in 1619. Moreover, anti-black racism is the most central enduring story in this country. There has not been a time in recent history when state-sponsored violence that is disproportionately inflicted on black Americans has been so clear and thoroughly supported by evidenced-based research. In the first eight months of 2020 alone, police in the United States killed 164 black people (CBS 2020). Thus, it is an understatement to say that racial disparity in law enforcement detention, arrest, incarceration, and murder rates is well documented by peer-reviewed scientific research studies. When law enforcement has a policy of conducting race-based stops and frisks and engages in a pattern and practice of widespread racial profiling and unconstitutional stops, individual efforts are insufficient to address this type of wrong. 

In On Race, Cops, Fake News, and the True Inconvenient Truth: An Anti-Racist Manifesto, the author purports to report objective data to challenge the impression of rampant police violence against U.S. black citizens and the myth of prevalent white-on-black violence. The article is built around the argument that modern civil rights protests are, by definition, anti-American and police shootings of young black males are justified because they are responsible for “the most crime in this country.” As the author so ineloquently puts it, “The racial/police violence issue in the U.S. just won’t go away.” Sadly, this article is both misleading and errant. The author gives an inaccurate account of the implications of race-based policing and civil rights protests against police brutality after the murder of George Floyd. The rise of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement occurred for good reason, and those remain valid today.

Triggering the destruction of the status quo was a decade's long campaign led by black civil rights activists. Therefore, social justice advocates sympathetic to the plight of black Americans interrupted the vital organs of social life as a raging pandemic ripped across the United States and caused the world to grind to a halt. Therefore, citizens of all races showed up to press to end the state-sanctioned police murder of overwhelmingly unarmed and compliant black citizens. Therefore, regular citizens, civil rights organizations, and Fortune 500 corporations stood together to oppose a narrative that has dominated for over 400 years. So, contrary to the authors' contention, there is dignity and strength in every community's story of resilience and fight for civil rights. This is, in fact, the traditional civil rights cause.

Police and Controlling Blacks

Since its inception, the police force in the United States has been almost exclusively focused on controlling the black body. It is no accident that the slave patrols were the first modern police forces in the United States. It is also important to note that the slave patrols were established because of the white majority’s unwaning fear of slave revolts and runaway slaves in confederate states (Walker and Katz 2018). To maintain social control of blacks, this new form of law enforcement was created as a precursor to the institution of policing. The presence of four million newly freed slaves represented a grave concern to rich and poor whites alike.

The slave patrol's primary purpose was to maintain racial control and dominance over black freedmen, women, and children. Therefore, the establishment of the police force in the United States was a means of controlling blacks more efficiently in the postbellum south. Scholars have long argued that the modern U.S. criminal justice system functions as a contemporary system of racialized social control (Alexander 2012). Slave patrols were instrumental in continuing and sustaining the institution of slavery (Wilson 2022). Historians argue that the slave patrol system did not end, but the practice was instead manifested in a newer form, namely, state sanctioned police officers (Moore et al. 2018). 

Weaponization of Qualified Immunity 

Qualified immunity has been weaponized since its inception to protect police officers from lawsuits, despite voluminous eyewitness and now video evidence of law violations, misconduct, and excessive use of force. Under the legal theory of qualified immunity, officers may not be held liable unless there is clear evidence of police misconduct. The Supreme Court first recognized qualified immunity in relation to constitutional civil rights violations in Pierson v. Ray (1967). There, the plaintiff's alleged false arrest and imprisonment in violation of the Civil Rights Act. In that case, the Court held, among other things, that the defense of good faith and probable cause available to officers in a common-law action for false arrest and imprisonment was also available to officers in action under the Civil Rights Act for deprivation of such rights (Pierson v. Ray 1967).  

There is substantial evidence of racism and bias in policing that the author seeks to deny. According to Schweikert (2020), most members of law enforcement operate today in a culture of near zero-accountability where police officers rarely face meaningful consequences for their misconduct. Schweikert further argues that the public’s accurate perception of this fact has contributed to what can best be described as a crisis of confidence in our nation’s law enforcement.

Further, even our courts have found rampant structural racism in policing practices in cities like New York and Chicago, just to cite a few. In Floyd v. City of New York, the court held that the New York City Police Department (NYPD) implements its stop and frisk policies in an intentionally racially discriminatory manner (Floyd v. City of New York 2013). There, plaintiffs argued that NYPD’s use of stop and frisk violated their constitutional rights when (1) they were stopped without a legal basis in violation of the Fourth Amendment and (2) they were targeted for stops because of their race in violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment (Floyd v. City of New York 2013). 

The Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution prohibits treating similarly situated people differently. As articulated in Floyd, "Whether through the use of a facially neutral policy applied in a discriminatory manner or through express racial profiling, targeting young black and Hispanic men for stops based on the alleged criminal conduct of other young black or Hispanic men violates bedrock principles of equality" (Floyd v. City of New York 2013:771). In the Floyd case, officers being directed to target black males aged 14 to 21 for stops generally based on local crime suspect data is the sort of disparate treatment envisioned with the passage of the Reconstruction amendments. As a result, between January 2004 and June 2012, the NYPD made 4.4 million stops, over 80 percent of which were of blacks and Hispanics (Floyd v. City of New York 2013). More young black men were stopped and frisked by police than live in the city (ACLU 2019). Specifically, this means that innocent black male New Yorkers were illegally stopped numerous times over the course of their lives. Black tourists were subjected to temporary detention and street interrogations for simply exercising their Sixth Amendment fundamental right to unimpeded interstate travel. Black and Hispanics were more likely to be stopped even though white pedestrians were twice as likely to be found with a gun (ACLU 2019).

Considering the above, it is an understatement to say that the black communities have been impacted by stop and frisk policies and the resulting disparate incarceration rates. Constitutional rights belong to all, even those “suspected” of a crime. A police officer murdering a black man in broad daylight in public is the epitome of the institutionalized racism that the United States has been entrenched in for over 400 years. In the George Floyd murder case, Chauvin was not convicted for discriminating against George Floyd but rather for murder. The legal elements of discrimination and the elements of murder are different, and they are not the same crime. The author asks the question "Why assume that the cop who killed Mr. Floyd had a racist motive?" A better question to ask is, "how could a reasonable person believe that racial animus was not his motive?" Yes, Chauvin's motive was racial dominance and social control of the black body.

Moreover, it is not just black people who face maltreatment by law enforcement; it is disabled people, the mentally ill, poor folks, and those unable to post bail who are vulnerable to the unchecked abuses of policing power (NBC 2021). The concerns prompted Philadelphia to become the first major city to ban police vehicle stops for low-level violations after finding that the practice disproportionately impacted black drivers. Ninety-seven percent of police vehicle stops were for low-level violations, of which black drivers accounted for 72 percent. Only 42 percent of the city’s population is black (Keith 2021). Similarly, on October 28, 2021, a lawsuit was filed against the City of Beverly Hills, where plaintiffs alleged that the city intentionally targeted blacks in its enforcement action (Bellware 2021). In this case, there were 90 arrests in and around Rodeo Drive, an international destination for high-end luxury goods shopping, and 80 of those arrests were blacks (Bellware 2021). However, black Angelenos comprise a mere 1.95 percent of Beverly Hills residents and only 9 percent in Los Angeles County (U.S. Census Bureau 2020).

Myth of Black Criminality 

As stated above, the author contends that blacks account for most of the crime in this country. However, this statement is demonstratively not true and shows that the myth of the black super predator is alive and well. This false social construction of black criminality allows the police and criminal justice system to target black and brown communities. While it is true that blacks make up a disproportionate number of those involved in crime statistics, this statement requires qualification. The U.S. population is estimated at 328.2 million, including whites (258,646,488), blacks (48,221,139), Asians (22,861,985), American Indian/Alaska Native (6,945,552), Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islander (1,612,424) (U.S. Census Bureau 2020). Moreover, an estimated 384,827 million people were of Hispanic origin (U.S. Census Bureau 2020). However, the reality is that blacks make up approximately 14 percent of the U.S. population, with black adult men and women comprising approximately half of that. Moreover, the overwhelming majority of blacks are law-abiding citizens (U.S. Census Bureau 2020).

Nevertheless, offending patterns by race tell a different story. Such patterns show that, of the 10,085,210 offenses in 2019, blacks accounted for 2,667,010, whites accounted for the majority of offenses at 7,014,550, American Indians accounted for 244,200, and Asians accounted for 159,450 (U.S. Department of Justice 2020a). So, while blacks do not commit the majority of crimes in the United States, they do comprise a disproportionate share of those embroiled in the criminal justice system and those incarcerated in U.S. prisons and jails (West, Sabol, and Greenman 2010). Furthermore, it is likewise essential to identify the root causes of this racial disparity. The racial disparity in the criminal justice system results from decision-making at every point in the criminal justice process, beginning with law enforcement’s emphasis on particular communities, legislative policies like three-strikes and you’re out and stop and frisk, and the abuse of discretion at every level in the justice process.

Legacy of Slavery 

According to attorney Bryan Stevenson (MSNBC 2021a), "we have not addressed the legacy of slavery. We have not dealt honestly with our history, and the consequences of that have been devastating." He goes on to say:

People are not taught about the transatlantic slave trade. They are not taught about the multiple ways in which slavery created this racial caste system. They are not taught about the consequences of Reconstruction and what failed during that era. They are not taught about lynching and the era of racial apartheid. We are in the early stages of a post-apartheid era in this country, and I do not think many people have a consciousness about that. (MSNBC 2021a)

Thus, the reality is that white suspects are treated qualitatively differently than blacks suspected of a crime. A recent high-profile case is illustrative of this fact. In this case, a young man returned to his home in his fiancée’s van without her after a month's long road trip where he was seen battering her on the side of a highway. Police were called and received a report of him slapping and yelling at her, but he refused to help search for her and withdrew over $1000 from her checking account after authorities believe she had died. He was the last person to see her alive. The coroner has ruled her death a homicide by manual strangulation. Ultimately, he was only named a person of interest by law enforcement after several weeks, permitting him to go missing some two months after his fiancée did. Sadly, after his death from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, the FBI revealed that he admitted to killing her in a notebook found near his remains. Our hearts go out to all victims of crime, regardless of race. However, law enforcement takes every opportunity to avoid missteps when investigating white suspects, such that one wonders what a white man must do before he is named a suspect, especially in a homicide investigation. Systemic racism in policing and racial bias in the criminal justice system not only impacts black and brown people, their families, and communities, but also poor and disabled people, and women, as this case sadly demonstrates. Ultimately, institutionalized racism destroys the very fabric of a democracy that ties us together to create what we term “society.” 

Juxtapose this with the treatment of black women, like Breonna Taylor, who are met with weapons drawn while asleep in their own home, and black men, like Elijah McClain, detained and ultimately killed for innocently walking home from a convenience store. To address police violence, we must first lift the veil of secrecy that has shielded information about official misconduct by police officers for decades. States must follow legal organizations like The Legal Aid Society, which was instrumental in repealing the Police Secrecy Law, Civil Rights Law § 50-a, that had concealed information about official police misconduct in New York since its inception. 

A 2021 Loyola Law School report revealed a nearly 50-year history of gangs within the law enforcement ranks of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department. At least 18 deputy gangs (also known as cliques) were identified in the report (Kennedy 2021). In addition, a recent medical journal study revealed that more than half of police killings in the United States are not reported in official government data and black Americans are 3.5 times more likely to experience fatal police violence (Sharara and Wool 2021). Researchers looked at deaths from police violence between 1980 and 2018, one of the most prolonged study periods to date, and found that an estimated 55.5 percent were either misclassified or unreported (Sharara and Wool 2021). These findings support numerous previous studies that showed underreporting of police killings (Sharara and Wool 2021).

The federal government neglected to report, by [mis]classification and malfeasance, more than 17,000 deaths attributable to police violence over four decades. To understand the magnitude of this catastrophic loss of human life, this is the equivalent of 36 Boeing 747s’ worth of people killed by police (Williams 2021). The statistics are even starker for blacks, with the proportion of undercounted police killings rising to 60 percent (Williams 2021). In addition, the United States has 2.1 million people in prisons and jails and has the highest incarceration rate globally (Gramlich 2021). 

[Un]Constitutional Race-Based Policing 

In 2020, the world watched in horror as Officer Derek Chauvin placed his knee on the neck of George Floyd for over nine minutes until Floyd took his last breath of air and died. Derek Chauvin is a white police officer and George Floyd was an African American man. The conduct of Chauvin seriously damaged an already torched image of law enforcement nationwide and particularly in communities of color and the black community. The truth of the matter is that there are wide racial disparities in the criminal justice system.

One only must compare the response to the overwhelmingly white rioters at the U.S. Capitol insurrection on January 6th to the largely peaceful demonstrations against racial inequality and police brutality across the nation during the pandemic in order to understand the ongoing and unpaid work of emancipation. In the Capitol riot case, dozens of rioters have been charged only with misdemeanors, while many have completely avoided accountability for what most Americans believe was an act of treason. In stark contrast, court records show that dozens of protestors of the George Floyd murder have been charged, convicted of serious crimes, and sent to prison. This seismic injustice is just one example of unequal justice under the law.

The author grossly misrepresented the research on race and crime as well as numerous statistical concepts, including proportionality and numeracy. Moreover, the author inappropriately conflates applying “real numbers'' with thoughtful statistical reasoning. Comparing “real numbers'' is not a responsible statistical practice since it would be like comparing apples to oranges. It is true that researchers historically use proportions to measure significant socioeconomic magnitudes (Dunleavy and Lacasse 2021). However, to accurately compare racial groups, researchers must instead analyze differences in police behavior across communities. Thus, the rate of police shootings is, in fact, an indicator of how police respond to white criminal suspects versus black suspects; arrest rates are an indicator of police surveillance; crime rates are an indicator of police discretion; and the incarceration rate is an indicator of the unequal administration of justice. According to research on fatal shootings by police, while it is true that almost half of those shot and killed by police are white, black Americans are shot at a disproportionate rate, being killed by police at more than twice the rate of white Americans (Schmidt 2020; Shjarback and Nix 2021). What this means is that police kill black Americans at higher rates relative to population size. To answer the author's question, yes, population size does matter.      

Institutionalized Racism  

An overwhelming amount of research has shown that black Americans get surveilled, stopped and frisked, arrested, incarcerated, and sentenced to death at nearly four times the rate of every other racial minority group in the United States. The list of victims is breathtaking: Breonna Taylor (26 yrs.), Daniel Prude (41 yrs.), Rayshard Brooks (27 yrs.), Manuel Ellis (33 yrs.), Andre Hill (47 yrs.), Daunte Wright (22 yrs.), Atatiana Jefferson (28 yrs.), Aura Rosser (40 yrs.), Stephon Clark (22 yrs.), Botham Jean (26 yrs.), Philando Castile (32 yrs.), Alton Sterling (37 yrs.), Freddie Gray (25 yrs.), Tanisha Fonville (20 yrs.), Eric Garner (43 yrs.), Michelle Casneau (50 yrs.), Akai Garley (28 yrs.), Gabriella Nevarez (22 yrs., Tamir Rice (12 yrs.), Michael Brown (18 yrs.), Tanisha Anderson (37 yrs.), Walter Scott (50 yrs.), Elijah McClain (23 yrs.), and George Floyd (46 yrs.), to cite a few. 

So, walking while black, driving while black, swimming while black, napping while black, sitting in a Starbucks while black, working out while black, and biking while black represent the long list of incidents in which mundane non-threatening behavior by African Americans has led to violent encounters with police. Now we can add walking a dog while black. The reality is that racism permeates every aspect of American society—especially policing and the criminal justice system. This series of high-profile murders of black Americans reminds us of the legacy of chattel slavery in America. Every mother of a black son fears that her child will be the next victim of police brutality. America is at a crossroads, and what we do today will shape our society for the next generation. 

Black Americans receive unequal treatment when dealing with the criminal justice system. In 1997, black males, aged 25 to 29, had an incarceration rate seven times that of whites, while Hispanics had a rate two times that of whites (Bonczar and Beck 1997). At present, blacks are imprisoned in state prisons at five times the rate of whites (Nellis 2021). Most Americans agree that differential treatment experienced by minorities and state-sanctioned racial bias in policing are the root causes of these disparities in incarceration rates (ACLU 2017). “A majority of Americans recognize racial bias in the criminal justice system - only one in three agree that Black people are treated fairly by the criminal justice system” (ACLU 2017: 7). The criminal justice system is an extension of Jim Crow and cannot be separated from North America's long history of chattel slavery (Alexander 2012).

It is not just black adults who face unequal treatment under the color of law. A recent report found that black children as young as eight years old were routinely jailed in a Tennessee county for a crime that has not existed for more than a decade. The purported crime was "witnessing a fight," full stop. Those officials responsible for this violation of the constitutional rights of black children have never been held accountable. In this case, black children (especially black boys) were deemed "real threats," allowing for the jailing of kids under Tennessee Juvenile Court Law. This conduct is not only an immoral assault upon the black community, but it is also a profitable scheme marketed to other counties across the state (MSNBC 2021b). Disabled black motorists are accorded far less civility than white male mass murderers of innocent black parishioners or than white men who open fire with assault weapons at lawful protesters (Engel Bromwich 2017; Zapotosky 2017). Thus, contrary to the author's argument, police violence and mass incarceration must be analyzed through both a racial and social justice lens. 

Rise in Hate Crimes 

The FBI reported that hate crimes surged in 2020 to the highest levels in 12 years, with more than 7,700 people reporting that they were the victim of a hate crime—an increase of approximately 450 from 2019 (U.S. Department of Justice 2020b). Nearly 60 percent of the hate crimes reported were motivated by a bias against race, ethnicity, or ancestry. A disproportionate number of all hate crimes (i.e., 36 percent) were perpetrated against blacks, while anti-black bias comprised the largest category of reported hate crime offenses about race at 56 percent (U.S. Department of Justice 2020b).

Moreover, bias-motivated killings are at a record high amid a nationwide rise in hate crimes, with a record-breaking 51 fatal attacks. According to the FBI, of the known offenders, more than half were white (U.S. Department of Justice 2020b). Most experts agree that the hate crime statistics are likely a vast undercount because all hate crimes are not reported, and more than 3,000 of the more than 18,000 law enforcement agencies did not submit their crime statistics in 2020 as it is not a requirement (U.S. Department of Justice 2020b).

Conclusion 

This article demonstrates how central structural racism is to American prosperity and white privilege. For actual anti-racist academics, the next stage in the fight for civil rights may be the education of academic siblings regarding the continuing legacy and impact of institutionalized racism on American society. The problem of state-sanctioned violence is every American's problem. If the statistics were of other race victims, the nation would be in outrage. If the statistics mentioned above were about animals, we would place them on the endangered species list and raise billions in funds to protect them. We must continue to investigate the root cause of police violence as generations of researchers have.

In conclusion, denial of historical facts and scientific knowledge and quoting Hitler to make one's case can never be a good thing. When blacks are targeted for pedestrian stops, law enforcement tactics are applied unequally between various racial groups, and a policy to stop only the right people (sic black) is upheld; we have a duty to correct this. It will take radical transformations in our law and cultural practices to end racial/police violence.

References 

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Williams, Chris. 2021. “About 36 Boeing 747s Worth of People Killed by Police Are Missing from Federal Records.” Above the Law, October 1. https://abovethelaw.com/2021/10/about-36-boeing-747s-worth-of-people-killed-by-police-are-missing-from-federal-records/

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Zapotosky, Matt. 2017. “Charleston Church Shooter: ‘I Would Like to Make it Crystal Clear, I Do Not Regret What I Did.” Washington Post, January 4. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/charleston-church-shooter-i-would-like-to-make-it-crystal-clear-i-do-not-regret-what-i-did/2017/01/04/05b0061e-d1da-11e6-a783-cd3fa950f2fd_story.html