A LONG TIME AGO, I was hired to be an assistant professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. The then president of the college, Don Riddle, gave me as a sort of present to the then police commissioner, Patrick V. Murphy, who had as one of his missions the slimming down of the police force. Put another way he thought his cops were just too fat.
Anyway, that didn’t work but I did get to spend a lot of time in my office at the police headquarters, which was then in an old building on Center Street. I got to meet a lot of cops and I liked most of them. They were easy to talk to and they knew that they had hard jobs. In fact, they were doing the out-front work in a racist society that has consigned people of color to the economic and social underclass in America. As a result, it was their job to clean up after the rest of the country. We’ve all heard about “the thin blue line” that requires cops to stick together. Many people think that the police are the problem but, in fact, they are just the point guards for a racist society. Donald Trump knows that and has figured out a way to excite his base and to more than hint to them that they should perpetuate his racist ideology.
I have an African-American grandson who I adore. He is six years old, bright, funny and talented. Given a chance, he has a fabulous future ahead of him. His single father, my son Jonas, and I know that we live in a country in which, when that child grows up a little and goes for a run in a white neighborhood, two goons with guns may think that it is their right to shoot him down. We know that white privilege is omnipresent in this racist society. If he finds himself in Central Park where there is a dog leash law and asks a white woman, very respectfully, to keep her dog on a leash, we know that she may pick up the phone and call the police because a black man has asked her to obey the law. Sure, she has apologized but that story is one of thousands. Read more…