Dissident Politics: Some history about American policing, racial prejudice and White fear

Throughline is an NPR program that dives into history to argue for certain connections between the past and current events and situations. The program, Policing in America, goes through some of the history of policing from colonial days until now. A lot of it is unpleasant, to say the least.

I recall learning none of this in my public school education. That is probably because none of this was taught back then. Faulty memory probably isn't the main cause.

The program is ~1 h 8 min.

Some of the topics touched on are summarized below.

9:30 some early police forces or militias in the 1600s called slave patrols were formed to control Black slaves' lives and movements, while other informal forces existed for policing of the rest of the population in the colonies; by law White males between 21 and 45 were required to serve in slave patrols

10:20 in the South the slave patrols enforce slave laws, which controlled essentially all aspects of slave life; more broadly, the law gave the entire White population with police power and required all White adult men to police slave activities

11:40 in the South, slave patrol duties were written into the law and White people who did not show up for duty were fined; slaves caught doing things they were not allowed to do were subject to beatings ('corporal punishment'); the underlying concern among Whites was to prevent an uprising; punishment was required on the spot when a slave broke a rule; slaves attempting to flee could be shot dead

14:05 since most White men in the South were required to be on slave patrols, the law required them to work to protect the interests of the slave owners, who were directly competing with poor whites; what poor whites got was a feeling of superiority over Blacks; by the time the constitution was ratified, slavery had served as a form of social insurance for about 200 years -- that insurance protected Whites and it baked inequality into American law and society; the sense of White superiority was needed to maintain the solidarity of poor whites who did not own slaves, keeping them under the thumbs of rich slave owners

16:30 slave patrols lasted until the end of the Civil War, but within several months after the war, Southern states passed laws called Black Codes (that's a double entendre for sure) that allowed Whites to continue to control many aspects of Black lives; a loophole in the 13th Amendment abolished slavery except as punishment for crime; in essence, the law in Southern states found ways to turn Black people into criminals and return them to a slave status; the Black Codes criminalized essentially all forms of Black freedom, mobility, economic activity and political power, but the laws did not criminalize the right of Blacks to work for White men on the White man's terms - it was about as close to slavery as one could get

19:00 formal professional police forces did not exist in the South; the old slave patrols morphed into armed and vigilante groups with police power to enforce Black Codes; in 1866 the KKK was born in Pulaski TN, and it was popular and dominant and composed of the same people the slave patrols were composed of; there was no constitutional justice and instead, clan courts controlled the South; federal troops were required to crush KKK power and insure safety of Blacks

21:20 the situation was so bad that Congress passed the 14th and 15th Amendments to insure equal protection and due process, including voting rights for Blacks; that created a generation of peace and prosperity, but Southern states adjusted and changed tactics by creating Jim Crow laws by the early 20th century; the KKK emerged again and re-exerted control over Black American citizens (does anyone see a staunch modern resistance here in some Southern attitudes to Black people and their voting rights?); Jim Crow triggered the great migration of Blacks from the South to the North as legal constraints on their ability to flee fell away; the problem: the formal police forces in Northern cities rivaled the racism that Blacks had experienced under police and vigilante power in the South

23:50 part of the story of American policing goes back to London, England in 1829 and the Metropolitan Police Act, which created the 1st modern police force; it was new in focusing on preventing crime, community control and military structure, e.g., military style uniforms and military command and discipline; earlier US police forces were not structured that way; that model migrated to the northern US; by the late 1840s, immigrant European populations, especially the Irish, developed their own xenophobia and racism to what Blacks in the South and free Blacks in the North had experienced; early Northern police forces were composed of lower class 1st generation men, just a bit socially and economically above Black people; police in the North were critical to establishing a hierarchy among White immigrants groups (Germans vs Irish vs Poles vs Italians vs etc.) -- Blacks were always at the bottom → → police were critical to establishing a racial hierarchy among White groups and Blacks

....

48:35 the lesson from prohibition was that police cannot police or lock everybody up -- the police line is just too thin to do it (maybe social norms were starting to fall away and people started having less respect for police and maybe also the rule of law); the hammer fell on Black migrants, who were fewer in number and lower in status and respect

49:00 in 1931 the fed govt did the first major study on the criminal justice system and police violence and torture; a special report in the study looked at the "3rd degree"; Black activists who read the report howled that it was a lie that police violence and brutality toward Blacks had decreased -- the issue of police violence and murder of Blacks was mostly ignored and not mentioned

50:33 prohibition and criminal justice reform led to professionalized police and consolidated prior White groups into one race, established uniform crime reports, America's main source of crime statistics, but it wrote White racial crime statistics out of the report; the story of anti-Black racism was not included and the entire notion of police professionalism had no place for any focus on anti-racism; the concept of crime reporting was improved for everyone except Black people

54:00 (this is a transition from the old past to the present -- the logic feels weaker here and later, but if the historical data is consistent with this, then that's what the evidence is and the argument is defensible) Whites use a stigma of Black criminality to justify self-defense against Blacks like White Southerners used it to justify segregation and discrimination because Blacks are criminals (presumably because the Black Codes intentionally made them criminals); Black experience engenders distrust of police; police tell Blacks how much their lives do not matter in American society

56:03 after the 1930s police science until now partly draws on crime statistics and sociology that shows the innate and cultural tendencies of Blacks to criminality; in academic research, that begins to legitimize notions of Blacks as dangerous and criminal

57:55 psychologist Kenneth Clark generated data, including doll color preferences by young Black girls -- they preferred White dolls to Black dolls - that evidence was before the Supreme Court in the 1954 Brown v. Board of education decision that overturned public school segregation and the 'separate but equal' argument to keep Black children apart from Whites; later, Clark said that he had read the official riot reports on Black riots in 1919, 1935, 1943, and 1965; the findings and recommendations in each were the same, and after each report the response was the same, i.e., no response; pointing out the problem has no impact on fixing it

1:01:45 the question in 2021 remains the same as always: do White Americans still want the police to protect their interests over the interests the rights, interests and dignity of non-White Americans and non-Americans here now; Whites who report Blacks for non-reasons is evidence of the White privilege attitude -- does it matter or not, is White fear/anger rational or not?

Other historical context

This was not in the program, but helps with context to understand what was going on and its meaning.

Slave owners in the South used slaves to compete with White non-slave owning farmers. That forced incomes for the poor White farmers down to the point of near subsistence level. This situation heavily influenced immigration patterns, with new immigrants settling in the North because the standard of living for most non-slave owning whites was too unattractive. Immigrants avoided the South and I presume that contributed to the prevalence of the Honor Culture in the South.

Congress passed the 14th and 15th Amendments to insure equal protection and due process to Blacks in the South, and everyone else. Those are two of the most bitterly hated constitutional rights by the modern American radical right, which as has been attacking them ferociously for at least the last 60 years or so. A prominent exception is when the republican radical right Supreme Court in 2000 inexplicably relied on the hated due process clause to rationalized its declaration that Bush won over Gore in Florida. That decision was so legally and rationally awful that the court itself limited the decision to that case alone and set no precedent for anything other than that single case.
One concept I have learned is the incredible individual and social feeling of power and self-esteem that arises for many people (~90% ?) when their group feels superior to another that is less economically privileged and/or socially esteemed. My understanding is that is the single most important factor in why many lower income people oppose government help for people less privileged than themselves. Government help brings the looked-down on groups too close for comfort for the higher group, even if it is just one small rung up the ladder. Some or probably most people just have a deep need to feel better than someone else or an out-group, anyone, even when there is no rational basis to feel that way and even if the differences are small.