“Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help your black ass?
YOU GODDAMN RIGHT! …
A young Nigga got it bad ’cause I’m brown and not the other color so tha police think they have the authority to kill a minority?
FUCK THAT SHIT ’cause I ain’t the one for a punk motherfucka with a badge and a gun …
Searchin’ my car, lookin’ for the product thinkin’ every nigga selling narcotics …
Huh, a young nigga on the warpath and when I’m finish, it’s gonna be a bloodbath …”
– N.W.A.
It’s incredible how these words from The D.O.C., Eazy E, MC Ren, Yella, Dr. Dre and Ice Cube ring true of the sentiment of many Black Citizens of the United States of America today.
With the senseless killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis Police Officer of more than 18 years, Derek Chauvin, people all over the country and the world have taken to the streets to protest #PoliceBrutality and the untapped power of #LawEnforcement Programs that have become nothing short of #MilitarizedForces that many argue were created to not protect and serve all people but to protect and serve the property owning upper classes.
As some people call for #RadicalChange and #RadicalReform, we want people to know the #RadicalTruth of the long history of anti-black sentiment associated with this Fraternal Order.
Planting evidence, property destruction, confiscation, beatings, intimidating citizens, profiling based on race, none of it is new! It has all happened for centuries and as Professor of Justice Studies and Sociology at Kean University, Connie Hassett-Walker, argues, it is due to the roots of racism in the U.S. Policing.
In order to understand the roots of policing, we have to go all the way back to the era of Slavery and colonizing expansion in this country. As the colonies expanded and land was purchased by the European Founders of the United States, Blacks in the U.S. were enslaved to ensure low-cost forced labor. As Slaves tried to escape captivity numerous vigilante groups of White men were hired by Owners to find and return “their Property,” to quell any uprisings by slave groups or insurgent “freemen” wanting to assist in freeing slaves, and to exact punishments upon slaves as a means of replacing any thoughts of freedom with the terror of the consequences that often included public lynchings.
It is a definitive fact that since the infant beginnings of this country, Policing has been used as a force to #terrorize the #BlackCommunity in order to control them and force their abeyance and allegiance to a capitalist master class rather than a force dedicated to protecting and serving their interest as people.
From these beginnings, these forces became enforcers of #lawandorder or the conquerers of “disorder.” And of course order was relative to laws, codes, and policies that were put in place by the ruling White class, many of which were designed to oppress people of color that included blacks, indigenous and now immigrants that were not from slavic, nordic, and Anglo Sachsen cultural originations. They were legal ways to put Black citizens into indentured servitude, to take voting rights away, to control where they lived and how they traveled and seize their children for labor purposes.
The #BlackCodes that brought the country to #CivilWar were made illegal with the ratification of the 14th Amendment but they quickly became #JimCrow laws that were directly intended to limit the #civilrights of former slaves and other peoples of color through #separatebutequal mandates. These laws that dictated how Blacks should behave for about 80 years were a key element in the morphing of enforcement activity into white citizens empowered by local and state municipalities to seek out violators in order to exact brutal sanctions. It’s in this era that the organizations like the Klu Klux Klan became emboldened since nothing they did to terrorize Blacks was prosecuted or considered criminal.
At this point, policing was state and local sanctioned terrorizing and murder of Blacks throughout the country where the end result of any conflict always benefitted the White persons involved. Unfortunately, this legacy often continues today breeding a great mistrust of the Police and the Judicial Systems by Blacks in the U.S.
Not until after World War II when the country saw an increase in civil rights activities in the African American community, with a focus on ensuring that Black citizens were able to vote after fighting for their country, did the pending end to Jim Crow laws become possible.
With President Harry S. Truman ordering the integration of the military in 1948 and the Supreme Court ruling “separate-but-equal” education unconstitutional in the 1954 case of Brown v. Board of Education, the beginning of end of the Jim Crow was ushered in. In 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act, which legally ended Jim Crow segregation and in 1965 the Voting Rights Act halted efforts to keep minorities from voting. The Fair Housing Act of 1968, which ended discrimination in renting and selling homes followed, making Jim Crow laws technically off the books.
But unfortunately, legislating equality did not insure equal opportunity or equal treatment by law enforcement for Blacks in the U.S. During the fight for Civil Rights leading up to the end of Jim Crow in the 1960s, as many movement leaders like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. advocated for peaceful protests, there were a few violent and destructive riots. With the overwhelming majority being peaceful, Police still answered Blacks’ and their allies’ calls for change with aggressive dispersion tactics, such as the widely publicized and televised police dogs and fire hoses that were turned on peaceful protestors at marches and sit-ins.
The pervasive violent policing in communities of color with officers being acquitted for their actions that builds distrust at a local everyday level has continued each decade since the passing of civil rights legislation of the 1960s. In 1967, it was the beating of Cab Driver, John Smith in Newark, New Jersey. In 1991, the beating of Rodney King in Los Angeles, California took center stage. And the list of unjustified and non-prosecuted brutality goes on well into the current decade with the death of Trayvon Martin in 2012. Tamir Rice, Akai Gurley, Michael Brown, Dontre Hamilton, John Crawford III, Ezell Ford, Dante Parker, Tanisha Anderson, Rumain Brisbon, Jerame Reid, and Eric Garner were all killed in 2014. Jamar Clark, Jeremy McDoyle, William Chatman II, Walter Scott, Tony Robinson, Philip White, Eric Harris, and Sam DuBose all killed in 2015. Terence Crutcher, Alton Sterling, Freddie Gray and Philando Castile all killed in 2016. And the “trend of fatal police shootings in the United States seems to only be increasing, with a total 429 civilians having been shot, 88 of whom were Black, as of June 4, 2020. In 2018, there were 996 fatal police shootings, and in 2019 this figure increased to 1,004. Additionally, the rate of fatal police shootings among Black Americans was much higher than that for any other ethnicity, standing at 30 fatal shootings per million of the population as of June 2020.”
After each of these events calls for change were activated by the Black Community but nothing has been done so it is clearly undeniable that Police have had and continue to have the attitude of F**k Black Lives since this country began by looting, pillaging and spreading disease throughout the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas and up until this point, with no recourse from our legal system, there has been no end in sight. With evidence such as this, it shouldn’t be very hard to understand the phrase offered by N.W.A. “F**k tha Police!”
With the advent of #BlackLivesMatter in 2013 and that movements’ continued calls for change being slow to receive appropriate actions and responses, it appears this anti-Police sentiment among Blacks, other People of Color and White Allies, which is apparent in the recent introduction of anti-brutality legislation, policing reform and department de-funding movements, will only grow until the attitude of the Police and the tactics of policing in this country changes from the inside or is forcibly shifted from without.
STAFF AUTHOR: Dr. Brian N. Hewlett is a Sociologist of Race & Ethnic Relations and a Social Psychologist who Co-Founded the Shroom Garden Universe to assist in the exploration of the human mind and social consciousness. He teaches at multiple institutions of higher learning in the Denver, Colorado area and currently serves as the Pre-Production Unit Director of the forthcoming Hallowed Harmony TellUrVision Comedy Series that prominently features Minnesota Activists as protagonists working to alter the city’s profit over people motive.
Reference Links:
Fuck Tha Police by NWA
Derek Chauvin: What We Know About The Former Police Officer Charged In George Floyd’s Death
Racist Roots of American Policing: From Slave Patrols to Traffic Stops
Jim Crow Laws
The Long Painful History of Police Brutality in the U.S.
Here’s a Timeline of Unarmed Black People Killed by Police Over the Past Year
14 High-Profile Police-Related Deaths of U.S. Blacks
Number of People Shot to Death by Police in the United States from 2017 to 2020, by Race