Gabe Marks: It's time for a frank discussion on race in America
THE MURDER OF George Floyd in Minneapolis has triggered a reaction in the nation’s black community that has people drawing parallels to the 1960s. As a product of Los Angeles’ African American neighborhoods I can tell you exactly why this killing triggered such an outpouring.
First, there’s the callously egregious actions of the police officer and the complicity of his colleagues.
Second, it comes on the heels of two other preposterous killings: Ahmed Aubrey going out for a jog and being hunted down and killed by vigilantes who authorities originally said acted within the law; and EMT Breonna Taylor being shot eight times in her sleep during a misguided police raid.
Third, my community - the black community - deals with this kind of brutality every single day and the frustration that our institutions aren’t changing and that our friends in the white community aren’t as outraged as we are.
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The “few bad apples” that white America and law enforcement can point at to separate themselves from the immediate crime are obviously a problem, but the bigger issue in my view is the cognitive dissonance in white America. This dissonance and disassociation of the white community from issues regarding racism and discrimination against black people is what enables this kind of abuse by those “few bad apples” to go on year after year, decade after decade.
You stand by and say that because you personally didn’t pull the trigger, you aren’t the problem when in reality, your complacency and reticence to demand change has emboldened these killers because they’ve seen that you will do nothing in the face of their hunting of black people in our communities. The words of Angela Davis ring so true to me: “In a racist society, it is not enough to be non-racist -- we must be anti-racist.”
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Policing in large parts of America, and more particularly to the black experience in the American south, was originally created as a means of controlling black populations and hunting escaped slaves. These “Slave Patrols” were authorized to enter any individual home based on the suspicion of harboring individuals who had escaped captivity. Eastern Kentucky criminologist Gary Potter explained that the officers were expected to control the “dangerous underclass” rather than combat crime itself.
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