We, in this second installment of considering the long term effects of George Floyd’s murder, will focus on police.
Not only the police department which housed, and at least initially, covered and succored ex-officer Chauvin, but police departments in general; how they have evolved over time, the sometimes yawning divide between their stated mission and the unspoken, yet so often brutally enforced mission; what policing looks like depending on zip code. How the origins of the modern day police force still hold influence in how police see their role and do their jobs. Who the police protect and serve–and who they control and contain.
The above considerations are important. Police, in its modern iteration in this country, have origins in slave patrols. That function has technically been laid to rest; after all, technically there are no more slaves in America.
It is useful though to look at the three functions of slave patrols, and to then pivot and look at how they play out, albeit in a (slightly) diluted form, in the present day.
Somewhat surprisingly, the National Law Enforcement Museum gives us a good definition; surprisingly, because the Museum is not a place to go for pointed critique on the police; rather, it is a memorial and an ode to policing in America. I chose this source for this very reason. No wild eyed shouting here. But the Museum appreciates the need to acknowledge the origins of the institution they celebrate; they understand that to fail to do so undermines what they contend are the good that police do now–that in order to honor the institution today, it is important that the public know what was. Depending on your perspective, it is an evolution (if one endorses the ideal) or a form of mission drift (if one looks at how the influence still plays out).
And what was, was horrific. The Museum’s website has a blog post that speaks to policing’s unsavory past. Quoting historian Gary Potter, the functions of slave patrols were to:
“(1) to chase down, apprehend, and return to their owners, runaway slaves; (2) to provide a form of organized terror to deter slave revolts; and, (3) to maintain a form of discipline for slave-workers who were subject to summary justice, outside the law.”
What is not mentioned, but is plain in the white spaces between the words of the quote, their main function was terror; to intimidate and control not just those who either attempted escape, but also, and crucially for our purposes of 21st century anti-racist praxis, to control and punish those who, in conscience, tangibly resisted by aiding the escaped enslaved, or in other ways providing allyship and succor. This served to curb the conscience of would-be white allies, as noted in a piece in the American Bar Association, where author Connie Hasset-Walker notes:
Without warrant or permission, slave patrols could enter the home of anyone—Black or white—suspected of sheltering escaped slaves. (In modern times, this would be a clear violation of the Fourth Amendment and constitute an illegal search.) After the Civil War ended, the slave patrols developed into southern police departments. Part of the early police’s post–Civil War duties was to monitor the behavior of newly freed slaves, many of whom, if not given their own land, ended up working on plantations owned by whites and to enforce segregation policies as per the era’s new Black Codes and Jim Crow laws.
These two functions: control and containment of freedom for Black people, enforced even after the putative end of slavery by Black Codes and later Jim Crow, and harsh consequences for those white people who would critique and resist, echo still.
This state sanctioned terror was not confined south of the Mason-Dixon line. Slave patrols, and individual bounty hunters could and did venture north to apprehend slaveholders’ property and return them to shackles. Later, it morphed to enforce the Black Codes and Jim Crow by keeping sharecroppers on land, and buttressing the power of white land owners, as well as enforcing debt incurred by sharecroppers, and by enforcing a ‘way of life’ that depended on subjugation and oppression.
Modern police forces still often have the DNA of slave patrols, and their morphed post-slavery counterparts.
The idea of people as property morphed into property rights over people; most specifically a specific cohort of people.
Coming back to the here and now, it is instructive to look at how the three purposes of slave patrols have morphed, and as well, to consider how quashing of dissent and action played out and still inhibits white action in service to conscience and morals.
In modern day, the three principles can be thought of thusly:
- The prison complex, which hearkens to a specific carveout of the 13th amendment, which specifically excluded prisoners. Michelle Alexander, in her definitive book, “The New Jim Crow” , speaks to this well; how mass incarceration of Black (and brown) people have led to a shapeshifted form of slavery. This includes what happens after the incarcerated are ‘freed’; parole; loss of voting rights and other rights of citizenry and other limits, makes for a provisional and truncated form of humanity in the states’ eyes.
- Organized terror, where there are two sets of ‘acceptable behavior’ on the part of the police, one of the most blatant and sickening of which resulted in the death of George Floyd.
- Which leads us to the law itself; how it is selectively applied and enforced; the draconian measures of ‘three strikes’ which could go back decades, and gang enhancements which serve to exacerbate the above two.
All three of the above dynamics conflated in the case of Mr. Floyd, particularly the ‘right’ of police to be more harsh with (at least at first) less accountability.
But.
The police cannot control and contain Black and bodies physically without also controlling and containing white minds, attitudes, and fears. As seen above, often times the fear, real or imagined, of consequences possibly incurred if white people, either individually collectively, question, critique, or take action–whether it be stepping in using their own bodies to protect (almost never happens) to whipping out their phones, or even calling legislators and policymakers to demand change–the modern day equivalent of being a ‘safe house’ is inhibited and discouraged. The media takes a role in this, in how it covers both police and the neighborhoods the media are often demonizing, which provides cover and protection for abuse.
Liberation must happen–both in terms of the physical and, crucially, the emotional and the mindsets of those who observe.
Absent this, the ‘aberration’ of Floyd, which wasn’t actually, will continue. With our collusion.
Queries:
- Does the knowledge that modern policing has been informed by slave patrols inform your perceptions?
- Where, in your own areas, are police actually charged to ‘protect and serve’? Where does the unspoken, yet enforced ‘control and contain’ occur where you live?
- What fears do you have of people, of neighborhoods, of The Other might you have that allows you to, if not endorse the worst actions of law enforcement, render reticence or even silence?
- What can you do in the face of distortions to acknowledge and then live out our collective responsibilities?
- How do we hold communities well without the boot?
Join us in the Bistro Discussion below
Leave a Reply