“I Can’t Breathe”

“I Can’t Breathe”      May 31, 2020  Dr. Roger Ray, pastor

click here to see the video

p. 181 “Black and Blue: Exploring Racial Bias and Law Enforcement in the Killings of unarmed Black Male Civilians” American Psychologist 2016

With the Department of Justice’s indictment of the Ferguson Police Department for racially biased policing (United States Department of Justice, 2015), as well as their probe into the death of Freddie Gray in Baltimore (Verhovek, 2015), there is increased public impetus for police reform. We agree that institutional reform is critical. However, since racial bias neither begins nor ends with police, calls for change must extend beyond police organizations.

Thus, we apply principles of both social and industrial and organizational (I/O) psychology to offer suggestions for society and joint police-community partnering. Then, we offer recommendations for law enforcement to better enable those partnerships and support systemic reform.

Amy Cooper picked a bad week and the wrong victim to trot out her white privilege this week. Christian Cooper is an avid birder and he was out in the fairly wild bramble of New York’s Central Park watching for birds. Signs in the area tell dog walkers that their dog must be on a leash, but Amy had let hers go, and her dog was scaring away birds and bothering Christian. He asked her politely to leash her dog, but she refused. 

When Christian insisted, she played a card that black men have seen far too often. She called on her white privilege, especially the privilege of a white woman, and she called the police and accused Christian of threatening her and her dog. She demanded that the cops come immediately and make him stop.

“I do declare, there is a black man here and he is scaring me!” Amy picked the wrong victim this time. 

Christian, not that it should matter, is a Harvard educated professional, and he just wasn’t going to fall for this old ploy. He recorded her racist attempt to assert her privilege and posted it online where, in the week when George Floyd was brutally murdered by four Minneapolis police, the video went viral. Even Christian feels that the public response to Amy’s racist phone call has been too much. Her employer fired her rather than suffer association with her. Her employment and probably her safety in New York are over. So, I don’t want to just pile on. It is easy to hate someone like Amy Cooper, especially this week.

She is not personally responsible for the racism that led to the police killing of George Floyd, Ahmaud Aubrey, Atatiana Johnson, or Philando Castile, but she is representative of it because her response to her sudden infamy is almost as familiar as the last words of George Floyd and Eric Garner, both of whom uttered the unforgettable last words, “I can’t breathe.” 

When Amy’s name became known she released a public apology that included this familiar phrase, “I’m not a racist.” “I’m deeply sorry, but I am not a racist.” She told the police that he was threatening her life but the next day she insisted, “I didn’t want anything bad to happen to him?” Because, what bad things could possibly happen to a black man in the park when a woman claims that he is threatening her life? 

Last year, police shot and killed 1,099 people in America. That is not counting victims like George Floyd and Eric Garner who were not shot, they were choked to death. In all of last year, there were only 27 days when the police did not shoot and kill at least one person. And, as you already know, a black man is 3x more likely to be shot than a white man. And it isn’t just a deep south issue. A black man is 6x more likely to be shot by the police in Oklahoma City than they are in Georgia. I have been in Oklahoma City several times and I can’t remember even seeing a black man in Oklahoma City! 

When you run the numbers, there is not a direct relationship between the size of the black population and police shootings of black men, there is not a direct relationship between the crime rates or gang related incidents in a city and the frequency of police shootings. The truth about race in America is complicated but, for the most part, it isn’t what you think it is. 

Again, I don’t want to just flog Amy Cooper in public because she is an easy target, what I do what to say to all of my white friends and listeners is that there is an Amy Cooper lurking inside of all of us. I am a white guy from rural Kentucky raised by gun toting, uneducated, children of the south. That doesn’t mean that I have a Phd in racism, in fact, the opposite, I know about racism the same way a fish knows about water . . . we are a part of the culture and the culture is a part of us. I knew when I heard what Amy Cooper did that she was being an unreflective, stupid, white privileged racist… I spotted it in a second.

And what’s more, when I heard Joe Biden telling Charlemagne that if he was undecided about how he was going to vote in November that “You ain’t black,” my stomach hit the floor. Joe Biden is a two-legged gaff machine but for an old white guy, under any circumstances, to say that if a black man doesn’t agree with what we want black men to think that they are not really black . . . that is not a gaff, that is political suicide. But it is hard for a fish to be aware of water and it is hard for Joe Biden, for Amy Cooper, for Roger Ray, David Ketchum, Sean Spyres or any of you white folks here or watching us on line to be aware of your white privilege and how often you consciously or unconsciously use it. 

Amy Cooper says that she is not really a racist, but we all know that, no, really, she totally is. And Joe Biden would insist that he isn’t, but these gaffs don’t come out of thin air . . . he is not nearly as much of a racist as Donald Trump but that is not the issue, Joe Biden has lingering white privilege all over him. I am not going to say that I am not a racist . . . I can say that I have spent my life trying to rid myself of my heritage but I am not going to claim to have achieved that goal because someone here would point out some time when I have recently enjoyed a bit of white privilege, even if it is just being able to walk around the square without being heckled by a bunch of white kids in a pickup truck, yelling racial slurs at me.

But more likely, when I get pulled over by the police for speeding, and I’m not saying that has happened, more than six or seven times, . . . that I have never been given a ticket. Because, I don’t have to say to the police officer, “Hey, I’m white, how about we just chat about this and I’ll promise to slow down and don’t write me a ticket?” He can see . . . 

remember David, when we got pulled over and the police took a long time checking the license tag and looking us over before telling us to have a nice day and to be more careful? Does that happen to black people in Springfield? White people don’t have to ask for privilege at the bank, in the court room, or even when we are protesting in public places, we just get it. And I’m a socialist!

Sure, we’re talking about this today because George Floyd was brutally choked to death by policemen in Minneapolis this week. I want justice for George Floyd and for his family, the justice that Philando Castile’s family didn’t get. Like all of you, I want to see the police involved charged with murder and taken to trial. I want them to receive a fair trial . . . not a white man’s trial, I want them to receive a fair trial and a just sentencing if they are found guilty. But what I don’t want to do is to rant and bluster about this injustice and be guilty of losing the context of it all. 

While we never want to lose the value of any unique human life that is unjustly taken, we don’t want to just have a series of angry outbursts that don’t go anywhere and don’t accomplish anything. It is about George Floyd but you can’t pull his death away from its connection to the recent shooting of Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia,  

and you can’t help associate his choking death with the death of Eric Garner, 

And Missouri’s own Michael Brown. Each has their own story, each one leaves behind a grief-stricken family but, and this is as much my fault as anyone’s, we get mad, we get sad, we make demands, and then we just go back to living our lives.

 Minneapolis is on fire this week, sure, because of George Floyd, but not just because of George Floyd. I don’t know much about Minneapolis but I know they have been in the news for police killing of unarmed black men several times in recent years. About 20% of the city is black, but if you have watched any news coverage of the protests, the majority of protestors are white because the city’s heritage of police violence against black men is no secret. Most white people want racism to stop, they want the police killings of unarmed black men to stop. But beyond expressing public rage in the immediate aftermath, what can be done?

I propose 2 foci: first we need to consider what can be done immediately to make things better and secondly, we need to look into the roots of racism and figure out how to get rid of it forever. 

Please forgive me if this seems rather prescriptive but the topic is too important for me to be misunderstood. I believe that we need to immediately reform policing but not policing alone. As I have been saying for years, our justice system is broken. Police who shoot and kill unarmed black men are rarely even charged with crimes and when they are, they seem to magically be acquitted or found to be innocent in spite of the whole world seeing the video of an obvious murder. This two-tiered justice system is primeval and must be reformed. 

And, there is no place as racially charged as our jails and prisons where prison staff are often just as racist as the racially defined gangs they are trying to manage in incarceration. I think that we need to reform all three dimensions of this cultural problem simultaneously and immediately.

How do we do it? Well, here is some good news. There are best practices that are field tested and that we already know will work to reduce race related crime while we work on writing a memorial service for racism generally.

From Ferguson to Minneapolis and all points in between, we see that white men are way overrepresented in law enforcement, the judiciary, and the penal system. We need to intentionally and specifically create a staff in all three levels that is reflective of the culture in which they exist. Recruiting needs to include background and psychological testing to weed out racists and people who have extreme needs for authority and respect. 

Secondly, we need to defuse the whole “them and us” mentality among police in cruisers and people on the streets. We need cops on sidewalks, interacting with business owners and neighbors. There needs to be a lot more facial recognition that isn’t based on a computer program. 

The research literature indicates that the worst of these racially influenced murders take place when white men are assigned to teams together. When a man is paired with a woman or when whites and people of color are put into teams together, they are much less likely to do something like what happened in Minneapolis this week when a white policeman knelt on a black man’s neck for five minutes while he slowly suffocated. I believe that if there had been a black officer there or a woman of any race, I believe that George Floyd would be alive today.

And, fourthly, cultural awareness needs to be taught constantly. We have made progress by including programing on TV that subtly exposes straight people to gay people, sys-gender people to trans folk, and white people to black people. But, and I have to admit that one of my white privilege failings has been that I have paid relatively little attention in my writing to black history month or gay pride month, but we need to be cross-pollenating our minds with the cultures of those around us 12 months out of the year. 

What if every police force, judicial staff, and prison staff in America had to read three of Toni Morrison’s novels in the next year? Maybe everyone can’t really learn what they need to know in a sociology class but just read a fiction novel written by someone who articulates the black experience in such a profound way that you will have to go look into a mirror to be sure that you are not a young black woman in rural Georgia. If there were any way to reliably prove it, I would bet you a $1000 right now that Amy Cooper has never read a Toni Morrison novel because, if she had, what she said to that 911 dispatcher would have stuck in her throat. 

These four proposals are not original to me. This is what I have found in the professional literature, but I have one more thing I want to talk about. I have talked about this before and I have not found it in the literature, I just know that I am right. I am going to conclude with this point, not because I am finished but because I have to stop somewhere. We will have more sermons on this channel this summer on how to root racism out of our society but for now, 

I want to talk about the thin blue line that says that law enforcement officers always have the back of every other law enforcement officer. I get it. The job is sometimes dangerous. Cops can’t confidently face the dangers they try to mitigate in the streets if they can’t trust their peers to have their back.

I had a brief stint years ago as a reporter on a military base. I have felt the camaraderie among the ranks. I know how deep and how powerful that sense of brotherhood is. But, guys, don’t you wonder if anyone on the Minneapolis police force was surprised on Friday that Derek Chauvin was arrested and charged with 3^rd degree murder.

In fact, if we had taken a confidential poll among law enforcement officers last week, asking them to guess which member of their force would eventually be charged with murdering a black man, I bet his name would have come up pretty often. 

Most people who choose to go into policing have a high need for order and most typically a personal desire for power and recognition. When you combine that with a latent sense of racial superiority, then this crap happens. 

I believe in everything that I said earlier about diversifying the force, humanizing policing, mixing police partners by race and gender, and including cultural sensitivity training. But, come on, we could cut down the number of unarmed black men killed by white cops this week if the so called “good cops” would stop covering for the bad cops and report them. And, guys, what makes you deserve to be respected and looked up to, what on earth qualifies you to be thought of as being a “good cop” if you are covering for, if you are protecting, if you are, in every literal sense, an ally with violent, racist, stupid, unhinged monsters who masquerade as people who have pledged to serve and protect the vulnerable on the streets?

Who knew that it would come to this with Derek Chauvin and didn’t report him deserves their shield today? 

Come on cops, look at this headline from the Los Angeles Times:  Getting killed by police is a leading cause of death for young black men in America. You are doing this! You are murdering black American citizens and you are hiding the people who are going to pull the trigger this week and I’m asking you to be a man and put a stop to it. 

I love my friends who are loyal and supportive but when I am in the wrong, my friends need to be the ones to tell me first, not the ones who lie for me and cover my tracks. When you silently listen to racist remarks, you are emboldening racism. When you laugh at racist jokes, you are setting up some black young man to be treated as if he were subhuman. 

And, when you let that openly racist cop three lockers down from you to put on a badge and strap on a weapon and then head out to the streets then you are nothing but the dog feces on sole of the shoes of our society. You are better than this. If you want us to buy this “protect and serve” line then you need to show us some integrity. If every law enforcement agency doesn’t do a deep dive review of their staff and cull at least 10% of their force then we know that they are not taking this issue seriously yet. 

I’m not saying that rioters should have burned down the 3^rdprecinct police headquarters in Minneapolis, I’m just saying that all you morally equivocating cops who didn’t report Derek Chauvin know why it happened and you know that you had it coming. 

There are a lot of things that scholars, psychologists, sociologists, and criminologists have to say about how to change the system to make it better. But I want to be clear about this, nothing gets the individual cop off of the hook for not reporting the racists in your midst. You know who they are, and you need to do your part to protect and serve the people.