I am a Black man, and as much as I love everything about my Blackness, it can become tiring to remain acutely aware of it in many daily public situations. What’s funny about this previous sentence is that as simple as it appears, it will probably be interpreted in two different ways by most (not all) Black and white people. Many African-Americans will look at that sentence and understand that the comment is referring to the sometimes obvious, yet often covert nature of prejudice that we face, from needing to code-switch in our office to mentally preparing ourselves to be followed around and treated like we’re casing a joint for a robbery whenever we walk into a high end store.
Yet, many white people will read that first comment and think that the problem is inherently with how we CHOOSE to see the world, NOT with how things actually are. They will tell us to stop “playing the race card”, or they will instruct us to “not see skin color”, as if refusing to acknowledge and appreciate each others differences is a sign of post-racial unity. But this simple misunderstanding is proof of why minorities need to tell their own stories, and why ignorant white reporters like Sean Bergin need to keep their bullshit opinions to themselves.
Bergin, a News 12 New Jersey reporter, has recently made waves by going on air and collectively blasting Black males for having negative views about the police.
Police officer named Melvin Santiago, a 23 year old rookie on the force, was murdered in front of a Walgreens by a Black man who apparently planned the murder in advance. Lawrence Campbell allegedly stole a security officer’s gun and waited for police to arrive, reportedly telling a witness that he was ‘going to be famous.’ When Santiago arrived, Lawrence gunned him down and then was subsequently shot by other officers right after.
During News 12′s report, they covered the story with a familiar classlessness that marks many major media outlets – they focused on the shooter, more so than the officer. But not to tell a story of mental health, or to gain a look into the mind of a man who decided to murder an officer knowing that he would probably die in the process too, but rather to present his community’s sorrow as tacit approval of his actions and to use the statements of his wife, Angelique Campbell (“He should have taken more with him…If they were going to stand over my husband and shoot him like a f***ing dog, he should have taken all those motherf***ers out.”) as low hanging fruit to help further demonize the killer. But it doesn’t end there. As bad as reading the statement was, deciding to interview her in front of her late-husband’s make shift memorial shortly after his murder was far worse. She emphatically doubled-down on her wish that he murdered more officers and that is when shit went out of control.
After that pathetic segment aired, the station was inundated with calls from police officers who were ENRAGED at the fact that the shooter’s wife was not only interviewed and recorded, but actually had her statements included in the segment. Instead of interviewing fellow officers to get an idea of Melvin’s humanity, or interviewing his family so they could express their grief, the station decided to do what it ALWAYS does in the face of a tragedy involving poor Black people – find either the loudest or the most ignorant and hopefully attempt to capture them in the middle of emotionally-driven, stereotypical antics. They hadn’t even spent one night analyzing the killer’s motives, but they rushed to push the mic in front of his wife – and they got EXACTLY what they were looking for. So when you take her comments and combine them with the backlash from the angry and emotionally distraught police officers, it created the perfect storm for Bergin to believe that a hyperbolic, bullshit comment on the Black community at large would be acceptable:
“We decided to air it because it’s important to shine a light on the anti-cop mentality that has so contaminated America’s inner cities. It has made the police officer’s job impossible and it has got to stop.
The underlying cause of all of this, of course: Young black men growing up without fathers.
Unfortunately, no one in the news media has the courage to touch that subject.”
Bergin was suspended – and later quit – following the statements. Still, it is enraging to hear a middle-class, middle-aged white male putting ALL the blame of the tension between Black folks and police officer’s squarely on Black men, as if decades of targeted brutality, racial profiling and corruption hasn’t contributed to Black folks pain. As if Black people just decided to hate police once we gained our freedom because we couldn’t ‘get over that whole slavery thing.’ Which was then followed up by a priceless correlation with absentee fathers, followed by probably the most ignorant assertion of his entire rant, that NO ONE in the news media has the courage to touch that subject.
Apparently Bergin just appeared on this planet through a fucking time machine that helped him skip the promulgation of the absent Black father all over major media for the past three decades. But more than anything else, it just proves why more white women and men need to be educated about the historical and current Black experience with police in America, because presenting comments without context is dangerous and stupid.
Here’s a story that no major media outlet has had the courage to touch: The fact that the police force in the United States was built on racism and continues to practice prejudice right up to today. Here are FACTS about policing and the Black community:
The birth and development of the American police can be traced to a multitude of historical, legal and political-economic conditions. The institution of slavery and the control of minorities, however, were two of the more formidable historic features of American society shaping early policing. Slave patrols and Night Watches, which later became modern police departments, were both designed to control the behaviors of minorities.
The use of patrols to capture runaway slaves was one of the precursors of formal police forces, especially in the South. This disastrous legacy persisted as an element of the police role even after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In some cases, police harassment simply meant people of African descent were more likely to be stopped and questioned by the police, while at the other extreme, they have suffered beatings, and even murder, at the hands of White police. Questions still arise today about the disproportionately high numbers of people of African descent killed, beaten, and arrested by police in major urban cities of America.
While I don’t want to appear to cosign the actions of absentee fathers, how could one look past that reality and believe that there is NO reason for Blacks to feel ANY animus towards the police? And that is only the start. We can discuss the countless police assaults on Martin Luther King Jr. and his fellow protestors which resulted in his “I Have a Dream” speech, that specifically addressed police brutality. We can talk about how the Black Panther Party was formed with the main intent of protecting the Black community from being unjustly arrested and murdered in their own communities, and how COINTELPRO was enacted as a response to their creation and used illegal and heavy-handed measures to quell their message.
It’s important to note the historical context between Blacks and the police, because it’s important to note the tension that young African-Americans are BORN in, and police officers are inserted into. Young Black boys and girls don’t need fathers in their lives to TELL them about what the police are, because they LEARN FIRST-HAND, and sometimes at a very early age. Black kids aren’t being TAUGHT to hate the police, as much as they are simply existing in an unfair and unjust system which continues today. Former NYPD police commissioner Ray Kelly publicly condoned racially profiling Black and brown people in 2013, and much of the same behavior continues today. Black people are still being victimized every day by the police and the entire justice system and that’s where this hatred is coming from.
But the reality in America is that white people simply can’t understand the racial tension between Blacks and police because they are statistically targeted and punished far less than Blacks and brown people. Black men are more than twice as likely as white men to face charges that carry a minimum mandatory sentence, and we are face charges that are 7-10% more severe than white people get for committing the same crime with the same criminal history. What black people do you know who’ve used the “affluenza” defense during a murder trial? Yet far too many white people feel the need to EDUCATE us on our own experiences which they are lucky to not have to go through.
The reality is that killing cops is wrong and advocating murder is wrong because not all cops are alike. But since not all Black people share the same views on the police, it’s ignorant as shit for an out-of-touch white male to believe he can dissect an entire complex community in one seriously flawed sentence. We are human beings just like you – not lions roaming the Serengeti who must be analyzed from afar to be understood. We have the ability to vocalize exactly why we feel the way we do towards the police, but the real question is, “do you care to listen AND believe what we say?”
LAB
Lincoln Anthony Blades blogs daily on his site ThisIsYourConscience.com, he’s an author of the book “You’re Not A Victim, You’re A Volunteer” and a weekly contributor for UPTOWN Magazine. He can be reached via Twitter @lincolnablades and on Facebook at This Is Your Conscience.