Kneeling is Not Enough -- June 2 2020

Kneeling is Not Enough – Dred Feminist Rant #17

©Loretta Ross – June 2, 2020

How should black people interpret police officers kneeling in solidarity at protests? Is it a true fracture of the “thin blue line” to indicate agreement with the protestors? Is it a cynical gesture designed to quell the potential for a lasting multi-racial and multi-generational rebellion? Is it a belated recognition that Colin Kaepernick’s kneeling protest was the peaceful version of what’s happening now?

I don’t believe we should lightly dismiss the few cops humbly kneeling at demonstrations. At the same time, actions by individual officers will have little impact on the culture of police brutality if police unions continue to shield the “bad cops” who repeatedly violate our human rights with impunity. 

A real democracy needs more evidence besides kneeling. Activists should be taken seriously when we demand the defunding of the prison industrial complex and investing in our communities. This is not just about individual accountability for the few cops exposed on video and reluctantly prosecuted. Communities should be believed when we report injustices routinely committed by cops who refuse to see our humanity.

Officers mocking us with “I Can Breathe” t-shirts should be fired. Officers racializing their decisions to arrest, beat up, or kill suspects should be held to the same standards of assault and murder as people not in uniform. Officers turning off their body cameras should be investigated and probably fired when trying to hide their crimes. Chiefs who tolerate this behavior should be removed. 

White supremacy is baked into the DNA of America’s violent culture when it comes to policing Black, Brown, and Indigenous bodies. While the solidarity actions of a few police officers and chiefs are welcome, these symbolic gestures will do little to overhaul the culture of militarized state violence and the quotidian surveillance that violate our civil liberties and human rights.

Perhaps they can make more humane arrests. Perhaps they can make sure to report fellow officers who break the law. Perhaps they can learn about the human rights of suspects. All of these actions place their jobs and sometimes their lives at risk when they choose to lean into their better selves and center their humanity behind the badges.

Yet I’m forced to remain skeptically optimistic. I don’t need to repeat the horrific history of police violence against people of color and all poor people in this country. There have been entirely too many opportunities to do the right thing in the face of injustices by cops, and few cops have risen to the challenge to create enough positive narratives to engender trust in our communities.

I have trained police officers about human rights. I’ve trained FBI agents on how to recognize hate crimes. I have worked with the National Black Police Officers Association to try to make a difference. I’ve been to the Pentagon to train on sexual assault and domestic violence in the military. I have met many people in these trainings who want to improve community relations and make it safer for people to live, work, and breathe in this country.

I believe many of them sincerely hope to do the best job they can and not dishonor the oaths they have taken to respect the rights of people and uphold laws that are fair and just. Perhaps those kneeling are making the only protest they feel they can make. Those are the ones I want to call-in to see if we can create positive change together, but I’m not hopeful the political bandwidth exists for that conversation to happen without rebelling in the streets to demand urgent action.

What I have not seen is the courage of the leadership of this country to push through substantive and effective changes that can build a culture of trust that we need to move bravely into a future that doesn’t have mass incarceration as an economic incentive and social control mechanism, disproportionately looting Black, Brown, Native American, youthful, queer, and immigrant bodies. 

According to the Prison Policy Initiative, “The American criminal justice system holds almost 2.3 million people in 1,833 state prisons, 110 federal prisons, 1,772 juvenile correctional facilities, 3,134 local jails, 218 immigration detention facilities, and 80 Indian Country jails as well as in military prisons, civil commitment centers, state psychiatric hospitals, and prisons in the U.S. territories.”[1]

We endure an industrialized prison culture using police power to address all social problems that emanate from white supremacy and neoliberal capitalism. To paraphrase Naomi Murakawa, America doesn’t have a criminal problem that is raced; it has a race problem that is criminalized.[2] Protestors are not mad at cops unless the cops are mad at us first.

It doesn’t seem to matter if the authorities are black, white, brown, Asian, or women. To get elected to public offices in this country to positions of sufficient power to change law enforcement policies almost always requires the endorsement of powerful police unions. This means restricted and largely ineffective efforts to rein in bad cops, and those who seek to do so get rapidly de-elected in the next election.

As a human rights activist, I like to believe that most of the people who put on uniforms understand the vow to “serve and protect” others. But just like a few looters can stigmatize an entire peaceful protest as “violent thugs”, a few bad cops also stigmatize all law enforcement officers as potential lawbreakers. Police accountability is rare, and justice in this country is not colorblind.

I want to believe even cops can say, “Enough to Enough!” I want to believe that we can step back from the brink of Martial Law threatened by President Trump in his cowardly need to be seen as a strong man rather than hiding in the bowels of the White House. I want to believe we can abolish the prison industrial complex and turn towards transformative and restorative justice practices many human rights activists share.

Black people have tried prayers, sit-ins, marches, teach-ins, and lawsuits to change police culture in this country, to little avail. Cops kneeling is not enough.

[1] https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2020.html 

[2] Naomi Murakawa, The First Civil Right: How Liberals Built Prison America, Oxford University Press, 2014.