POLICING THE AFRICAN AMERICAN COMMUNITY: OVERVIEW OF A HISTORICAL PERENNIAL

–Dr. Robert L. Jenkins, Sr.

Prof. Emeritus, Mississippi State University

In recent years, America has been rocked by a rash of deaths of Black men at the hands of police. Although the national outrage prompted by these frequent occurrences is well deserved and clearly understandable, it is important to note that these are not new phenomena. Indeed, they are part of a historical continuum that can be traced to almost the very beginning of the presence of Black people in what became the United States. In a nation whose heritage is defined as much by negative racial thought, practices, and policies as it is by the fanciful or, at best, elusive notions of fairness, equality and broad-based democracy, it is easy to identify the causation of these often-brutal police actions as simply white racism. To be sure racism, whether overt or latent, is central to understanding why police authorities have so frequently victimized Black people. But, perhaps, a root cause is more deeply engrained in the human psyche.

Firstly, humans in a position of authority have almost a natural tendency to exercise their power recklessly, primarily because they can do so. The remark made famous by nineteenth century English historian, politician and writer, Lord John Dalberg-Acton, that “power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely” is fraught with meaning when applied to the history of policing practices in the United States and how these permissive practices have often negatively impacted the Black community.

Secondly, a powerful force that affects all people at some point or another is the human emotion of fear. In policing the Black community, whether this fear is unconsciously prompted by a malicious group emotional trait steeped in racial stereotypes, or simply a conscious personal reaction to potential or real personal danger, it is notably flawed and cannot always stand on its own merit. It certainly cannot be accepted as a justifiable excuse for any form of police brutality, especially when the officer is clearly unthreatened as so often has been the case. Indeed, fear-based excuses, seemingly always uttered in the lofty standard, “I feared for my life,” have too often been used and unreasonably accepted by higher authorities as legitimate to exonerate police officers’ conduct in real questionable violent actions.

At the very least, the public expects—and deserves—police officers to be persons of courage and reason, certainly not someone easily intimidated by or over-reactive to imagined or even real threats from encountered subjects.

White supremacy views, undergirded by virulent racism helps elucidate how Black people experienced policing during American slavery. From the evolution of the system in the colonial period to its later status in the mid-nineteenth century, slaveholders simultaneously sought not only to protect their economic interest in their human property, but also their own personal safety. In every community where the institution existed, rural and urban, fear of the Black population, whether slave or free, dictated the need for private citizens and public officials to remain constantly vigilant.

The size of local law enforcement, however, was never sufficient to ensure the safety of their communities, especially in those areas of the Plantation South where the slave population was the largest. Hence, slave patrols comprised of able-bodied citizens typically drawn from the lower economic class of the local white community assisted law officials in monitoring and regulating the Black population. Shaped by views of their own lowly economic status and/or a deep-seated hatred of Black people, these men could and often did use their own discretion, sometimes very brutally, in how they disciplined slaves for violations of state and local laws or societal norms.

Some slaveholders were uneasy regarding the prospects of a serious injury to or the death of a valuable slave and occasionally criticized the heavy-handed tactics of some of these “community minded” patrollers. Most slaveholders, however, accepted the inhumane treatment and use of often deadly force against their human property if they believed the patrols had prevented a potentially life-threatening situation in their community.

In the years following the end of slavery, the White mentality of mistrust, fear and hatred of African Americans continued to result in racially-based policing. Whether Whites were official police agents or not, they employed both legal and extra-legal practices to keep Blacks under control. White suspicion that Blacks might retaliate for years of enslavement and cruel treatment often increased tensions in rural southern areas where the bulk of former slaves still resided. Indeed, the slave patrol mentality transitioned to such aggressive policing of Black communities that even the most minor infractions might be met with brutality, including the use of deadly force.

Racially discriminatory policing also occurred outside of the former slaveholding areas as the migratory patterns of former slaves and later generations led movements into northern and western regions of the country. White cities in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries affected by the ever increasing influx of recent arrivals reacted to the new Black competitors for jobs, housing and political empowerment with a hostility that often rivaled the harsh realities of southern living, including policing practices with which these Black migrants were also already familiar. Unlike contemporary policing practices, officers in the late nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries were usually a part of the locales that they policed. Thus, officers closely identified with local concerns and justified their brutal treatment of Blacks as necessary to conform to community norms and expectations. If there were concerns about the practices outside the Black community, they were largely muted and remained so well into the twentieth century.

Even in cases where Black people have been abused by minority race police, these officers, too, seldom were subjected to legal accountability for their actions. To be sure, occasionally there might be an “official inquiry”, but as in similar cases involving White officers, these, too, were also often little more than sham formalities. In such instances, the understanding of the governing authorities—and a significant number of the general White population—was that the brutal harm done was justified; accordingly, many reasoned that not holding the officers to a strict code of conduct ultimately protected the White community at large from real or potential Black criminals.

Moreover, it was easy for many Whites to disregard charges of police misconduct as a show of support for all officers who obviously worked in, and often faced, dangerous personal situations. Hence, such support, regardless of how contradictory the evidence might be against the offending officer’s claims, a non-binding code of ethical conduct was viewed as necessary for officers to “execute their duty,” when the use of deadly force was regarded as a real necessity. Clearly, both the executing officer and the governing authorities were at liberty to close their eyes to abusive police power. Thus began the early stages of an avid White conservative base of unequivocal support for the police, a strong base that remains highly evident in the twenty-first century. 

In more contemporary times, oversight policies in numerous police departments or governing bodies appeared. The work of the bodies responsible for this scrutiny, however, has almost always proved suspect at best. So, allegations of police brutality or the overuse of police power prevail unabated almost everywhere in the land. Regardless of whether such charges actually prove true or remain merely suspected, the historical legacy of police brutality against African Americans is understandably deeply positioned in the Black psyche, ever-present in their consciousness whenever and wherever they encounter law enforcement officials. Hence, like the mixture of oil in water, but for different reasons, more than ever the relationship of the two human elements seems wholly antithetical. Influenced by the very nature of their clashing historical experiences, the disharmony inherent in the relationship remains deleterious to the African American citizen and, unfortunately, appears destined to make for persistent strained police-Black community relations well into the future.