Don't Know Much About History

The chief of the police department in Ferguson, Missouri made an incredible statement after his community became the focus of national attention. In discussing his work with the Justice Department's "community relations team" to improve his rapport with the citizens of Ferguson, he stated, "I told them, 'Tell me what to do, and I'll do it.'"

Consider that admission. The police chief of an American suburb does not know how to talk to his community; to paraphrase conservative columnist Mark Steyn, who wrote brilliantly on this topic, Chief Thomas Jackson does not know how to do his job. And he apparently needs the federal government to tell him how to do so.

As Steyn points out, this situation could not be more backward. Modern policing traces its roots to the Metropolitan Police created by Sir Robert Peel in 19th-century London. That force's nine principles of policing were intended to differentiate law-enforcement from military action. To this day, the British police do not carry weapons, and do not wish to do so. As Peel put it, "the police are the public, and the public are the police." Even more revolutionarily, the BBC argues that the police should serve the public, not the state.

But not in Ferguson. Andrew O'Hehir wrote in Salon that in Ferguson two trends converge– the militarization of American police and state violence against African-Americans. This argument is undoubtedly true, but too narrow. Ferguson, in fact, combines every facet of American racism with every facet of America's failure to temper the free world's most violent police force.

To take racism first, a number of recent articles have underscored the extent to which the sins of our fathers still define the African-American experience. To quote the subtitle of Ta-Nehisi Coates' incisive piece in the Atlantic on "The Case for Reparations," African-Americans still feel the effects of "two-hundred fifty years of slavery," "ninety years of Jim Crow," "sixty years of separate by equal," and "thirty-five years of racist housing policy."   Another piece in the Atlantic looked at how the legacy of Brown v. Board of Education is being undone in the South. And the statistics bear out the deleterious consequences of such a history.

In Ferguson, this legacy is obvious, or at least should be. The town has a poverty rate of 22 percent. And though its busing program survives, its schools are failing, and black families trying to move their children to better districts face "a backlash with racial undertones." That's why people at Missouri Governor Jay Nixon's press conference demanded that he would do about the suburb's schools. For them, the shooting of Michael Brown underscored just how their community had been forgotten. A child who had to fight through the still-formidable educational hurdles of American racism could just as easily fall victim to its criminal "justice" system, with little apparent concern from the wider world.

Police (and non-police) violence against African-Americans clearly fits into this history. Lynching in the Deep South became "He's got a gun!" in the industrial North, and across the country. O'Kehrir and Steyn name some of this trend's victims: Amadou Diallo (immortalized in Bruce Springsteen's "American Skin (41 shots)"), Rodney King, Sean Bell. But despite the obviousness of this national plague, despite the transparency of the history, despite promises of reform, we still get Ferguson. We still have a police department that is 94 percent white in a city that is 70% black.

Which brings us back to Sir Robert Peel. The police in Ferguson, and in too many American communities, are simply not the public. A history of racism and a national pathology for declaring "war" on non-military phenomenon like drug addiction has ensured that, in the areas most in need of intelligent policing, it does not exist. Why else would the Ferguson police have responded like Tehran P.D. when confronted with legitimate protests over what amounted to a cover-up?

(We shall here also stop to contemplate why trigger-happy black protestors with guns draw the National Guard, while white ranchers and militia threatening federal agents with a full-on firefight can cow the most powerful government on earth. See Brad Friedman in Salon.)

Despite all its negative aspects, Ferguson also points a way forward. Chief Jackson, whether his motives were pure or ill, was woefully under-equipped to deal with the needs of his community. He admitted as much to the Department of Justice. If his actions have demonstrated anything, it is that he knows little about the African-American experience -- with government, with education, and certainly with the police. The black Highway Patrol captain brought in to ameliorate the situation, Ron Johnson, has had mixed results. But he has connected with the community more effectively than any previous law enforcement official.

And little wonder. He grew up in the area. He appreciates the daily racism that still exists in America. And, at least initially, he had his men start "behaving like police." Subsequent events show that the United States has a long road ahead to cull its police forces of violent tendencies and to undo the harm of 400 plus years of racial madness. But, as Captain Johnson put it at a service for Michael Brown, maybe Ferguson is a start of "change...in America."

Nelson L. Barrette ’17, a Crimson editorial writer, lives in Winthrop House. His column will appear every two weeks this summer.