Wise
Sometimes, folks don’t
even bother hiding their racism. Take Keith Fangman, President of the Cincinnati
Fraternal Order of Police. In the wake of this past week’s uprising to protest
the killing of Tim Thomas and fourteen other black men by his colleagues since
1995, Fangman said:
"If we give one inch to
these terrorists in the form of negotiations, then we’ve got no one to blame but
ourselves when we turn into another Detroit or Washington D.C."
Now, he could have said
that negotiating with the "rioters" would turn Cincinnati into another Boulder,
Colorado, or Carbondale, Illinois, or East Lansing, Michigan, or Eugene, Oregon,
or State College, Pennsylvania, or Storrs, Connecticut, or Pullman, Washington,
or Tucson, Arizona–all sites of major riots by drunken white college students
in recent years. But he didn’t. He picked Detroit and D.C.–two places that
haven’t had any riots lately, but which both have a lot of black people. And
that, after all was his point.
Now frankly, for any
representative of the official Police Corruption and Brutality Protection Union
(commonly known as the FOP) to refer to those who rebel against cop violence as
terrorists, is, well, precious to say the least. I think the old saying "takes
one to know one," probably applies here. Oddly enough the only "terrorists" in
evidence in Fangman’s town are the Klansmen he and his pals protect every
Christmas season when they erect their lit cross in Fountain Square. The rights
of a 135-year old paramilitary hate group apparently count for more to
Cincinnati authorities than the lives of young black men.
To hear police
representatives tell it, blacks in Cincinnati still have no rights that a member
of the FOP is bound to respect. In seeking to justify the deaths of the 15 black
males, Cincinnati Police Sergeant Harry Roberts noted that those killed were all
"criminals who resisted arrest," leading one to wonder just what is the
allowable punishment for "resisting arrest" in Ohio nowadays? I mean damn, I
knew the death penalty was still popular with most folks, but execution for
running away from a cop?
And as for the
"criminals" whose lives have been snuffed by the Cincinnati police, they include
not only Tim Thomas–whose rap sheet was filled with traffic offenses like not
wearing a seatbelt (the savage!)–but also Roger Owensby Jr., who had no
criminal record, but whose "attitude" convinced police to arrest him for
"disorderly conduct" and apply a deadly chokehold in the process. And then there
was Lorenzo Collins, a mentally handicapped and emotionally disturbed young man
whose shooting was explained as necessary since he was wielding a solitary brick
and threatening to throw it at police–fifteen of them who surrounded him before
dropping him in a hail of bullets. Sounds like a fair fight. Or Michael
Carpenter, who was shot in the back of the head during a traffic stop. Or
Courtney Mathis, a "menace to society" all of twelve years old who borrowed a
relative’s car and who was shot to death for trying to flee after being pulled
over.
Apparently the
Cincinnati police have a hard time distinguishing between children and hardened
criminals. Following the funeral for Thomas on Saturday, cops opened fire with
rubber bullets and beanbag ammunition, shooting a seven year old black female
during a demonstration and march.
But hey, as the FOP’s
official slogan boasts, they’re just "building on a proud tradition." A
tradition that reaches all the way back to 1915, to a time when many a proud
member of this proud organization proudly and rather openly engaged in the
murder of African Americans by joining in anti-black riots and lynchings. In the
first forty years of the twentieth century, about half of all blacks who were
killed, were killed by law enforcement, including, one can be sure, many a
dues-paying member of the FOP’s Aryan brotherhood in blue.
In recent years the
Cincinnati police in particular have been building on a proud tradition of
racism that has finally resulted in a lawsuit filed by the ACLU and a local
coalition of African American leaders. Among the dozens of racist actions
prompting the suit, perhaps the most egregious involves a pregnant mother of two
and her husband who were detained and handcuffed at gunpoint in front of their
children, even as the officers involved explained to them that they were looking
for two adult males driving a similar kind of car.
But rather than focus
their attention on weeding out those officers who engage in racist and brutal
practices, the FOP prefers to concentrate on such important tasks as boycotting
movies whose stars are supportive of Mumia Abu-Jamal. Seeing Mumia killed and
picketing Rage Against the Machine concerts have been among the group’s top
priorities in recent years. And even though the FOP rejected racial profiling at
their September 2000 National Board Meeting, they insisted on the legitimacy of
"criminal profiling," the definition of which apparently still includes race as
a factor of suspicion.
And of course there are
those who think this is just fine. On many a chatroom bulletin board one can
find any number of angry whites, defending the actions of the police and
chastising the black community in Cincinnati in only the most thinly concealed
racist terms.
"Most cop killers are
black," comes the cry from some–an argument that is both historically false and
irrelevant. Even if true, who but the most racist, unfeeling soul could use such
a "fact" to justify killing someone whose skin color happened to match that of
the offending group? In fact, by this logic of "rational" discrimination or
rational murder, blacks would have far greater reason to kill white police
officers than these officers would have to kill black people. After all, most of
the cops who have killed blacks have been white. But somehow I doubt that those
who think statistical models should be used to justify unequal treatment would
appreciate the use of the one to which I’m alluding here.
"Police put their lives
on the line every day,’ say others, ‘and we shouldn’t second-guess them when
they have to use deadly force." But police are actually half as likely to die on
the job as farmers, fishermen, truckers, construction workers or miners. And a
lot less likely to die from being police officers than black folks are, just
from being black. Whether from police violence itself, or inadequate health care
services, the excess mortality rate for African Americans is far higher than
that of police, yet rarely is there much sympathy for how often black people
"put their lives on the line every day" just trying to survive in this country.
"Notice that we whites
don’t go riot every time something bad happens to us,’ comes the mantra from
still others, followed by the predictable, ‘and look at what animals those
blacks are–they burn down their own neighborhood!" True enough, whites don’t
riot over things like police brutality, mostly because we aren’t often the
victims of it; but also because we are too busy rioting over other things–like
the outcomes of sporting events or crackdowns on underage drinking. Yep, at over
twenty college campuses since 1995, white co-eds have taken to the streets in
their own neighborhoods and gone absolutely ape-shit: burning furniture and cars
in giant bonfires, hurling bottles and rocks at police, and smashing glass in
business windows. 1500 people at Colorado University, 1500 at Penn State, 500 at
the University of New Hampshire, 300 at the University of Oregon, and over
10,000 at Michigan State in 1999.
And yet, when whites
riot (and don’t even get me started on Woodstock ’99 again), not only do we not
call them "terrorists," cops rarely if ever shoot them with rubber bullets or
spray them at point-blank range with mace. Although many arrests were made and
harsh sentences handed out in the wake of the Michigan State riot two years ago,
coverage was still largely sympathetic, with media asking "what made good kids
do bad things?" and focusing on the otherwise "straight arrows" who got caught
up in the moment. Hell, in that particular riot, white students were caught
actually trying to pry a loaded shotgun from a police car (before trying to push
the vehicle into the fire)–an act that surely would result in death number
sixteen were a black Cincinnatian to try it, but which, in East Lansing, only
prompted a brief volley of tear gas, in order to disperse the crowd.
And most telling of
all, in the wake of the two most serious white college riots–Colorado and
Michigan State–police and residents in the riot zone actually reached out to
students in an attempt to "understand their frustrations" more fully. According
to Boulder officials, the riots led to a greater attempt by police to improve
their relations with students; and in East Lansing, local residents launched a
campaign to "adopt" entire dorm floors, invite students to backyard barbecues
and let the kids know "that we appreciate them in the community," according to
one neighbor. I will swallow my keyboard if anything like that happens in
Cincinnati.
After all, in
Cincinnati there’s plenty of room for Klan crosses in public parks, racist
baseball team owners like Marge Schott, and blowhards like Keith Fangman and the
FOP, but no room apparently for civilian review of the police, accountability
for cop violence, or a real challenge to institutional racism at the highest
levels. It will be up to the folks in the streets to change that.
Tim Wise is a
Nashville-based writer, lecturer and antiracism activist. He can be reached at