For the consideration of folks who don’t yet support the protests sparked by the murder of George Floyd, or the reforms those protests are calling for, here’s a letter I wrote to a few relatives on the left, right, and center.
Fellow lefties, please note that here I’m trying to be persuasive to folks who currently disagree with us. And I use tools including understatement, making concessions, and reaching conclusions gradually rather than asserting them up front. So please don’t cancel me before you’ve read to the end.
Greetings fam! Will y’all allow me to barge into the discussions you’re having about race and police and whatnot?
As I told Susan when she and I messaged briefly, on lots of political issues, including those around policing, I think there are some ways that those on the left and those on the right tend to misunderstand each other. And I myself come down on the left, but I also see some perfectly valid points being made on the right. So here I’ll try to lay out what I see as some of the most important points and most likely misunderstandings. Then y’all can take it from there without me, or we can volley emails, or we can do a call—whatever y’all prefer.
So everyone agrees that what happened to George Floyd is horrific. But then folks disagree about the extent to which that one horrific event represents broader problems, and about the ways in which any problems would best be addressed.
Is it just a matter of a few bad cops who do bad things and then need to be caught and punished? Or are there deeper problems in the overall system we have for selecting and training police officers and running police departments? Within all those structures and processes and policies, are we trying hard enough to avoid ending up with bad cops who do bad things? Are we trying hard enough to catch and punish awful things when they do happen? And are we creating rules and oversight and a culture that push police to treat people fairly, always respect the rights the Constitution is supposed to guaranty, and only use force when it’s truly necessary?
Before we start trying to answer these questions I think we have to stop and ask what should guide those answers. Our gut feelings and initial judgments will tend to come from our personal experiences. And as middle class white folks, our personal experiences with police tend to be pretty good, at least relatively speaking. We’re not hassled for just going about our business, and our direct interactions with police are usually limited to just the occasional traffic ticket, plus maybe filing a report after a crime or a crash.
Those personal experiences are also supplemented by things like hearing about crime on the news and being glad there are cops to protect us from it, and seeing generally positive images of police work in our entertainment. So all of these things tend to make our perceptions of policing fairly positive.
But is this all the data that we need? Or are there more things that we need to take into account?
It turns out that yeah, there’s actually quite a bit more.
One huge point is that many poor Americans, Americans of color, and especially black Americans, have experiences with the police that are very very different from ours. We can see this in a few different ways. One way is very simple, but often strangely difficult, and that is to simply listen. We can listen to Americans of color who report being regularly profiled by police. Harassed by police. Threatened by police. Entrapped or framed by police. Beaten by police.
I know that lots of white folks are skeptical of all this. That’s not what they see, so it’s not what they believe. And those sorts of feelings grow stronger for folks who’ve got family or friends or neighbors that are cops. But in addition to the stories of black Americans there’s also lots of hard data to back up the things they’re saying. It turns out that American police are much more violent than those in any other rich democracy, and this violence falls disproportionately on black and brown Americans. And that’s true even after controlling for things like poverty and crime rates in America as a whole or within targeted communities.
But even if the numbers don’t move you, and even if you don’t believe the stories, there’s something more. Since the advent of smartphones we’ve seen video after video of police brutality toward black Americans. We saw police accuse Eric Garner of the trivial crime of selling loose cigarettes. We heard Garner talking to the police with a heartbreaking mix of frustration and fear. We saw five officers attack him, choking him and dragging him to the ground. We heard him gasping over and over that he couldn’t breathe.
We saw Philando Castile get pulled over for a broken tail light. We heard him calmly and politely provide his license and registration, and then follow the law and notify the cop that he had a firearm in the car. A moment later we saw that cop shoot him seven times.
We saw George Floyd, handcuffed and face down in the street, with three officers on top of him. We heard him say “I can’t breathe, man. Please.” Then “I can’t breathe. Please, the knee on my neck. I can’t breathe.” Floyd said he couldn’t breathe at least 16 times. But officer Derek Chauvin was unmoved. We saw him keep his knee on Floyd’s neck for an excruciating 8 minutes and 46 seconds. We saw him taunt Floyd to get up and into the police car, and then grind his knee down harder. We heard Floyd call out for his dead mother. Once Floyd lost consciousness we heard bystanders yelling and pleading in vain for his life.
Those aren’t isolated incidents. They are examples of just how violent American police can be, and how often that violence is aimed at African Americans. Each killing that we see on video represents others that we don’t see. And the killings fit into larger patterns. They’re part of a whole picture of policing in which cops are aggressive, unaccountable, and heavily armed.
And cops learn that when it comes to using force, “it’s better to be judged by 12 than carried by 6.” They act accordingly. And one giant issue is that cops work closely with prosecutors. But then when cops wrongfully use force, it’s those very same prosecutors who decide whether to bring charges. And they generally decline. In fact a full 99% of police killings don’t result in any criminal charges.
Another issue is something called qualified immunity, which protects individual police officers from almost all lawsuits. Cities sometimes have to pay out, but officers themselves almost never do. In addition, because of the power of police unions, it’s very difficult for officers to get fired. The picture that emerges from all this is that police can generally act with impunity. And that’s really dangerous. It’s dangerous not because of anything unique about cops, but simply because they’re human beings. It’s just a psychological fact about us that power corrupts. And the power to carry a gun, embody the authority of the state, and almost never be held accountable—that power is no exception. Even the best cops will tend to in at least some ways be corrupted by that power. Even cops who are wonderful husbands, fathers, neighbors, friends. Because like Jesus said it’s one thing to love those who love you, but something very different to love strangers or enemies. So even a good man, who is good to his friends and family, may end up acting quite differently when he interacts with strangers over whom he has unchecked power.
And things grow worse when those are strangers who he’s come to think of as his enemies. Which is exactly what happens with many cops and the communities they patrol. Especially when those communities are poor. And especially when those cops are white and those communities are not.
Here we’re even not talking about “racism” in the stronger senses, although we’ll get there. At this point we’re just talking psychology. Given how our minds work, when a white cop lives among nice middle class white folks but then works primarily with the few criminals among communities of color, certain associations start to form. A new white face sparks associations with his wife, his children, his pastor, his next door neighbor. Whereas a new black face sparks associations with the violent gang member he arrested yesterday, and the addict he arrested for burglary the day before. So the next time he pulls over a driver who was speeding, very different feelings rise up in his gut depending on whether that driver is white or black. And those different feelings can lead to very different approaches—and very different outcomes.
That’s what’s meant by talk of “implicit bias.” It’s about the associations and feelings that we can have completely independent of our explicit beliefs about race. And it’s something that psychologists have demonstrated over and over.
But we need to account for explicit bias too. Some white folks claim that explicit racism is extinct, or close to it. Because nobody uses the n-word in public, discrimination is illegal, black folks get degrees and own businesses and star in movies, etc. And sure, it’s true that public racism is indeed rarer and subtler than it used to be. But that shouldn’t lull us into thinking that there aren’t still some virulent racists in America. And the thing is that more than a few of them are drawn to police work. And it is terrifying to think how much damage can be done by just one aggressively racist cop, working with virtually no oversight, free to terrorize the black community he’s supposed to protect and serve.
And racism aside, the nature of police work seems likely to attract some problematic people. A job that involves power and violence will tend to attract some people who are a little too into power and violence. And that’s one thing that we’ve seen vividly over the past few weeks. In city after city we’ve seen peaceful protests against police brutality being met with police brutality. We’ve seen police knock down old men, kick women in the head, gas and mace people with abandon, and even fire flash-bangs and less-lethal rounds directly at peaceful protesters at close range, with those peaceful protesters trying to exercise their constitutional rights ending up losing eyes, suffering brain damage, and even dying.
We’ve also seen police lie about these things. For example, police in Buffalo shoved a 75-year-old man who fell, fractured his skull, and immediately began bleeding from the ear. But before the cell phone video hit the internet the police department tried lying and saying that the man had simply tripped and fallen. Or consider what we saw happen to George Floyd. You know what that department said before the videos spread online? Man dies after medical incident during police interaction. And each lie we see exposed by video represents others that we do not see. For every time cops are caught in a lie, how many other lies have they gotten away with?
Such lies represent a general police culture of loyalty. And this too is something that might not be about any unique faults in police as much as it’s about our normal human psychology. We are tribal creatures, and police constitute a tribe, with loyalty to one another and hostility toward any tribes that challenge them. So they tend to keep silent about abuses, and try to shield one another from accountability.
That’s a good system for police. But it’s not so good for the rest of us. And it’s least good for the black and brown and poor Americans who suffer the most police violence.
So it’s things like that that pretty clearly need to change. In fact, the need for such changes has been known for decades. There’s always room to argue about specifics, but there seems to be a pretty compelling case for overhauling our police departments in order to introduce more oversight, more accountability, some sort of independent prosecutors for police misconduct, an end to qualified immunity, and bans on tear gas and choke holds. And the case is similarly compelling that we should spend less money on military weapons and vehicles for police, and spend more money on alternatives to police that work better in particular situations, such as social workers and addiction counselors, and better schools and jobs and healthcare that prevent problems before they start.
Naturally, police and their unions will resist this. Nobody wants less power, fewer toys, and more accountability. And naturally Donald Trump will try using these issues to anger and frighten and divide people, because that’s what he does with everything. But if we set those things aside, what can really be said in opposition to these reforms?
The only answers I’ve heard seem to amount to changing the subject, usually to riots, symbols, or white guilt.
Obviously there have been some protests that turned violent, and some looting and arson. And I can understand people being angered or scared by that, and favoring a strong police response. That’s fine. But it in no way discredits the vast majority of peaceful protesters or dissolves the problems they’re protesting.
Then you have folks who want to focus on things like showing respect for police, or showing respect for the flag in their preferred ways, or keeping all our current statues in place. But those things are beside the point. No matter what approach you prefer or how important you think that approach is, it does nothing at all to undermine the protests or their demands. You can be furious at Colin Kaepernick, for example, and think that no one should ever kneel during the national anthem—but if you’re thinking clearly that still gives you absolutely no reason to think policing shouldn’t be reformed, or to think that issues of symbolic protest are as important as issues of life and death.
Lastly, some people seem focused on rejecting personal guilt. They object that they never owned slaves, they didn’t live through Jim Crow segregation, they aren’t personally racist—and so they have nothing to apologize for or feel guilty about. But I think that this too is beside the point. These issues around policing are not about white people’s feelings. And it’s entirely possible to feel no personal guilt but still face the facts of history and of the present, and support the police reforms that we need.
I’ll leave things there for now. Thank you for letting me barge in here, and I look forward to hearing what y’all think.
Much love,
Phil