aroonwithaview

In a cruel twist of irony, I received a marketing call from an agency that wanted me to “voice support for our brave men in blue” the same day that five police officers in Memphis were charged with murdering a black man after a traffic stop. The videos of the incident are truly horrific, and bravery is the last quality I would assign to those men in blue. And yet, despite evidence of gross evil such as this one and the George Floyd murder, a recent poll found that support for Black Lives Matter hovered around the same levels as that for the National Rifle Association, while Blue Lives Matters polls around the same as the American Civil Liberties Union.

Having grown up in a country where the police is viewed with suspicion by all social groups (an important caveat being that the distrust of the poor and the dispossessed is much more valid), it is a bit jarring to see them being revered by such a large section of American population. I think at least part of the reason for this stems from the progress made on racial discrimination in other, more competitive fronts. Politicians, companies, universities, and the like, function in an environment where they can be held directly accountable by competitive pressure from the existence of other options that their targeted audience could choose from. Thus the scope for racial discrimination has reduced over time in these spheres. The police, on the other hand, have total monopoly in wielding violence and barely any accountability. Thus, racism (and the racist) that is frustrated in other spheres finds safe refuge here. The relentless march of progress has made the police the last stand for an American systematic iniquity that stretches back to segregation, Jim Crow, slavery, and beyond.