Last Tuesday’s conviction of Derek Chauvin was a fundamental shift in police abuse cases towards Black Americans: a decades old problem that resulted in the murder of George Floyd, in Minneapolis, last year, and galvanized sympathy and world wide protests, all over the world. And, In America where race is never far from the surface, the guilty charges towards Chauvin, who knelt on Floyd’s neck for 9 minutes and 29 seconds, the verdict represented a sea change in accountability.
Before the advent of body cams and cell phone video by bystanders, police literally got away with murder, but not this time.
It wasn’t just about the protests from the Midwest to Los Angeles, Detroit and Philadelphia, all with significant Black populations, or the verdict itself, but how America deals with its most intractable problem, race, as former President Bill Clinton once labelled it.
The moral issue is also paramount, but so are the images of Black mothers keening in grief, as they mourn the loss of their children. We can say their names in our litany of grief and outrage, but the seemingly eternal struggle that began, as many say, with Emmett Till, the young Black boy falsely accused of whistling at a white woman, and whose brutal murder, in the 1950’s and whose open coffin was symbolic of the brutality that later evolved towards a sad continuum with Rodney King, moving on to Breonna Taylor, and onto Duante Wright, and now Andrew Brown, Jr. makes for a painful recollection.
The question for many is can this historical trajectory propel the United States towards not just police reform, but to also address the inequality that lies at the core of being Black in America.
A myriad of voices has taken to the airwaves, and while the memory of past wrongs has not been forgotten, this is also rightly seen as a starting point, and not the end, to redress wrongs.
President Biden summed it best when he cited meaningful efforts to “police reform” and . . to tackle systemic misconduct in police departments. . .but it shouldn’t take a whole year to get this done.”
Many outside of the White House are saying it shouldn’t also take 200 plus years to address the problem, and certainly the ghosts of slaves are present at the moment, some might be heard saying, “How long? How long, Lord?”
Looking at the role of lawmakers we have the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act as one significant step, but hopefully, not as the old adage states: “one step forward and two steps backward.”
The five points of this legislation: banning no knock warrants in federal drug cases, a national database on bad cops, with mandated collection, and the prohibition of racial and religious profiling and money redirected to community based policing programs is a foundational effort, and coupled with equality efforts can make a difference, in the lives of many Black Americans, but this is an effort that will be spread across decades.
The bill spearheaded by Rep. Karen Bass (D) California, progress is now hitting the political wall, a space where morality diverges, and politics emerges. And that space hits the numbers where after being passed in the House needs 10 Republicans in the Senate, before reaching the presidential desk for signature.
One question arises as Jonathan Chait outlined in a recent piece for New York magazine is this: should black protestors trust a system where they are underrepresented. It’s not simply a rhetorical one, but an effort that “will require fundamental reforms through democratic means.”
Basing his argument on the overwhelming whiteness of the Senate and its “greater representation to people who live in small states . . .[who] tend to be heavily white, this effectively gives white people far more power in the chamber than their share of the voting population.”
Once again, as he noted, we face the filibuster, non fiscal legislation such as this requires 60 votes, and that political reality may prove to be the end of this first step, since many in the GOP are now saying that the guilty verdict was based on mob rule, or rather the threat of mob violence, a reality for some, but which misrepresents the role of true justice, and a solid prosecution.
Another question: can the emotional toll and resonance be separated from the legislative process? It was done with the 1964 Civil Rights Act, by President Johnson, at great political cost to him; can it be done again?
Sen. Tim Scott, (R) South Carolina has been in discussion with Bass over a competing bill but one that has no outright ban on chokeholds, and was rightfully blocked by Democrats last June, not only for this omission, but also, not addressing “qualified immunity” does not fully address racial inequality.
The Rev. Kelly Douglas Brown once said after the Trayvon Martin shooting, which still rings true, “What became clear to me, and what is the disturbing thing, is that this moment we find ourselves in is not a moment. Black bodies that in this moment are under siege are part of a long history and narrative. It’s about how America has long identified itself as an Anglo-Saxon nation, and what supports this is white supremacy.”
In the midst of the Chauvin trial then there were more shootings that continued Rev. Douglas Brown’s trajectory. Added to the mix is the role of justice, rolling down like a river, but this time from the U.S. Justice Dept., that in the words of Attorney General Merrick Garland who announced a new inquiry “into possible patterns of discrimination and excessive force among,” the Minneapolis Police Department.
Which gives us pause.
Are we taking a collective breath? Or, are we hoping for the best? At what juncture can the intersection of race, class, justice and legislative action take place? For the better angels of our nature.
One sign has come from the Justice Department, where Attorney General Merrick Garland announced the following day, that he was introducing a new civil inquiry to establish “pattern or practice”, to determine “whether the Minneapolis Police Department engages in a pattern or practice of unconstitutional or unlawful policing.”
We also heard this: “yesterday’s verdict in the state criminal trial does not address potentially systemic policing issues in Minneapolis.”
Extending the tool of consent decrees, a long held tool to address civil rights violations, takes the nation further away from their near disuse under the Trump administration.
Going even further Garland is also investigating the Louisville Police Department, after the death of Breonna Taylor.
In the end, or more of the beginning, that the verdict will have to take a different path, is as Prof. Eddie J. Glaude, chair of Princeton University’s Department of African American History, who shared his thoughts with the media, based on his colleague Imani Perry’s book, “More Beautiful, and More Terrible”, that “we think about racial inequality not as intentional acts of discrimination that evidence themselves in our individual interactions; but that we “think about racial inequality as a kind of cultural practice.”
Moving ahead, can our efforts lead us away from this practice?
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