Say His Name: Police Brutality, Extra-Judicial Killings and Achieving Racial Justice in the American Legal System
With the Black Lives Matter Movement in full swing, I wanted to write an essay about police brutality and the gravity of what we are fighting for. We are not fighting against one incident, we are fighting against centuries of injustice. While there has been an acceptance of responsibly for the slave trade and Jim Crow laws by governments, a minimum acceptance is all there is. I do not focus heavily on the positives of the Civil Rights Movement, most school textbooks have a very poor teaching of racism after the movement. I try to discuss ways in which the governments could take action and how we ourselves can change things (protesting, educating and harnessing white privilege). They did it in the Civil Rights Movement, we can do it now. Note: I am not a scholar, I am just an angry law student; forgive any errors. I also know this is shoddy referencing work but everything has been cited - just not beautifully.
With the Black Lives Matter Movement in full swing, I wanted to write an essay about police brutality and the gravity of what we are fighting for. We are not fighting against one incident, we are fighting against centuries of injustice. While there has been an acceptance of responsibly for the slave trade and Jim Crow laws by governments, a minimum acceptance is all there is. I do not focus heavily on the positives of the Civil Rights Movement, most school textbooks have a very poor teaching of racism after the movement. I try to discuss ways in which the governments could take action and how we ourselves can change things (protesting, educating and harnessing white privilege). They did it in the Civil Rights Movement, we can do it now.
Note: I am not a scholar, I am just an angry law student; forgive any errors. I also know this is shoddy referencing work but everything has been cited - just not beautifully.
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disclaimers in their apologies that they could not be used to support reparations claims or other compensatory
measures. 71 However, as recognised by Barack Obama during his elections, ‘the best reparations we can provide are
good schools in the inner city and jobs for people who are unemployed’. 72 Apologies are necessary, however, in
addition to reparations as denying apologies absolves whites and the state of their roles in the institution of slavery.
John Conyers first proposed a bill to have a commission study slavery and its effects and develop reparation proposals
for African Americans 73 in 1989. The bill was consistently voted out. However, Conyers persisted and proposed the bill
every year until the year of his retirement, 2017. The bill was reintroduced again in 2019 by Ms Jackson Lee. This is
just one illustration of the State refusing to take responsibility. It can be argued that governments of today should not
have to pay for the original sins of the past; however, this is far from the truth, the scars of slavery are still seen
today. 74
The legacy of slavery and the Jim Crow laws continue and has directly impacted racial inequalities. Michael Dawson,
Political Science Professor at the University of Chicago, found that 71% of African Americans supported slavery
reparations while only 3% of the white people did. 75 Many people chalk down the denial of the reparations argument
to finances, not to race, these results show that this is not the case, if it was, both figures would be much closer
together. African Americans should not simply ‘get over it’ as Senator Sam Brownback suggested. 76 How can you get
over something that still significantly hinders every aspect of your existence today? Professor Ogletree argues that ‘an
essential element of the process of reparations is recognising that the present is not an accident or fortuity’. 77
Institutionalised Racism
T
o think that we have moved past racism is false. Systemic or institutionalised racism refers to the idea that
white superiority is found in everyday thinking and governs our institutions or systems. It is impossible to
detect when looking at a one on one interactions but is blindingly clear when looking at the bigger picture.
This also relates to my later discussion on white privilege, which you cannot detect without taking a step back and
looking at the statistics. Stokely Carmichael and Charles V Hamlinton explain the concept well:
‘When a black family moves into a home in a white neighbourhood and is stoned, burned or routed out,
they are victims of an overt act of individual racism which most people will condemn. But it is
institutional racism that keeps black people locked in dilapidated slum tenements, subject to the daily
prey of exploitative slumlords, merchants, loan sharks and discriminatory real estate agents. The society
either pretends it does not know of this latter situation, or is in fact incapable of doing anything
meaningful about it’ 78
The economic impact of racism is one of the worst; immobilising minorities. A Harvard study found that job
seekers were more likely to get interviews if they ‘whitened’ their names. With applications that implied their
race, 10% of black candidates got interview offers whereas when ‘whitening’ their CV’s, 25% got interviews. 79
You are more than twice as likely to get a job if you are white. What’s more, ‘pro-diversity’ employers (those
71
ibid
72
ibid
73
H. R. 4, 115 th Congress, 1 st Session.
74
ibid 70
75
n 72, 279.
76
ibid 280.
77
ibid 282.
78
Stokely Carmichael, Charles V. Hamilton, Black Power: The Politics of Liberation (Vintage, 1992).
79
Dina Gerdeman, ‘Minorites Who ‘Whitened’ Job Resumes Get More Interviews’ (2017) <https://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/minorities-who-whitenjob-resumes-get-more-interviews?cid=spmailing-25757313-WK%20Newsletter%2004-03-2019%20(1)-April%2003,%202019>
accessed 3 June
2020.
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