“You just shot four bullets into him, Sir”: The Role of Structural Racism in Cases of U.S Police Bru

As her boyfriend Philando Castile lay bleeding to death in the driver seat and her 4-year old daughter sat in the backseat witnessing the horror, Diamond Reynolds begged the police officer who had just shot her partner four times in the arm, “Please, officer, don’t tell me that you just did this to him. You just shot four bullets into him, sir. He was just getting his license and registration”. The death - and the Facebook live recording made by Reynolds in the aftermath of the shooting - is not the first and will surely not be the last recorded examples of the race-based abusive police brutality in the U.S. In fact only a day prior, a video showing the violent shooting of CD-salesman Alton Sterling by two white Baton Rouge Police Department officers had also caught the attention of the world. These unwarranted African-American deaths - alongside the many videos that have accompanied them - have played a fundamental role in the foundation of the Black Lives Matter movement; many attribute the movement’s birth with the social media attention brought forward after the acquittal of officer George Zimmerman for shooting to death 17-year old unarmed Trayvon Martin. Yet, regardless of the movement’s many successes and the visible evidence that the American police system suffers from deeply-engrained structural racism, the disproportionate deaths of innocent black Americans at the hand of law enforcement seems to only continue and perhaps worst of all, many branding the hashtag ‘All Lives Matter’ are attempting to argue that it is not even a problem to begin with. So why is it that decades after the Civil Rights movement paved the way for equal rights and opportunities for all Americans, we are still witnessing disproportionate rates of violence and poverty affecting specifically African-Americans?

Above: Protests erupt across the U.S in reaction to the shootings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile. Photo Courtesy of Eduardo Munoz/Reuters.

For journalist and author Ta-Nehisi Coates, whose book detailing the experience of being black in America entitled Between the World and Me won the 2015 U.S National Book Award for Nonfiction, violence against the black body is part of American history and tradition. He argues that “all our phrasing - race relations, racial chasm, racial justice, racial profiling, white privilege, even white supremacy - serves to obscure that racism is a visceral experience, that it dislodges brains, blocks airway, rips muscle, extracts organs, cracks bones, breaks teeth.” Indeed Coates is historically correct, the destruction and degradation of the black body is more than just a superfluous theory but the past and present reality of being black in America. This leads us to one of the most essential points to be made regarding the situation of police brutality in America; the experience of race cannot solely be understood through the ‘loud’ acts of everyday racism that occur but needs to be conceptualised as a deeply historically-engrained structural inequality that affects all and every aspects of certain lives. To understand this, we need to see race not as a biological fact but rather as a socially-constructed idea imposed on us; whilst differences in skin tone and hair colour may exist, the idea that these characteristics determine who a person is and where they stand in society is one that we’ve created very unnaturally. In fact, the process of ‘Other’-ing African-Americans and other minority communities is one that has insidiously integrated the history and cultural norms of American society. Whilst some may try to argue that, unlike in its slavery-torn past, everyone has equal rights in the America of today (a fact many LGBT community members can easily disprove) and therefore that movements like Black Lives Matter (unlike its Civil Rights predecessors) are somewhat obsolete today. Yet these people, whose vision of America is very much blurred by the privilege of never experiencing the everyday realities of racial hierarchies, are not only wrong, but extremely ignorant in the ways that racism functions in societies. The power of racism lies not only in its loud, hateful expressions (as we see with the words of Donald Trump or the actions of white supremacy groups) but also in its ability to subtly socialise us into a subconscious state of bias which leads us to treat people we perceive as ‘different’ differently (and often unfairly). The issue with the shootings of Alton Sterling or Philando Castile were not that these men were committing violent acts of crime, but rather that the officers who killed them had been socialised to believe - without forethought or adequate proof - that these men were threats to them merely due to the colour of their skin. As the recent history of America has repeatedly shown us, one does not to present an actual danger to be perceived as a threat, one needs only to fit the racial stereotype of one and the justice system supports this inequality. So when officers like George Zimmerman shoot down an unarmed teenager, a jury will acquit him of all charges of manslaughter and second-degree murder merely because the white officer unfairly perceived Trayvon Martin as a threat. In the U.S justice system, the voice of a white man (especially a police officer) speaks louder than the bullet-holed bodies of innocent teenagers.

Above: Collage of men killed by Police Brutality in the U.S (From top to bottom: Alton Sterling, Philando Castile, Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner) - Many, many more whose faces do not appear here.

None of us, no matter how well-intentioned, are completely free from the pervasiveness of subconscious racial bias. In fact, another problematic factor in these overflowing cases of police brutality is the role media-spheres play in subtly shaping our perception and understanding of what is essentially a human rights issues. While we may not always be so clearly aware of it, the discourse employed by certain media channels to discuss these cases have tremendous impact on the way we internalise and understand these tragic events. Perhaps the biggest issue is the focus on the violent cases of police brutality that tend to ignore contextualising issues of race and inequality in their investigations. In the aims of sensationalism and selling more editions, many traditional media sources barely go beyond the surface of racial inequality in America. To make matters worst, there is an almost systematic criminalisation of the young black men in the media; as opposed to debunking stereotypes, media channels profit more from subtly selling them. For Robin Kelley, professor of history at UCLA, the problem is clear: “the fact of the matter is that whiteness presumes innocence and blackness presumes, and you have to prove yourself otherwise.”. Take for example the death of unarmed 18-year old Michael Brown who was shot by officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri in August of 2014; while it was true that the teenager had a history of petty crime (he was stopped by Wilson for stealing cigarillos), nothing justified the eight bullet-holes Brown’s barely adult body was to receive from Wilson’s trigger-friendly gun. Yet, instead of focusing on the deeper reasons why a white police officer might perceive a provocative teenager (I mean, what teenagers aren’t?) as such a deadly threat, the New York Post preferred to write a full piece on Brown’s problems and history of petty crime, describing him even as “no angel” (as if this justified his unnecessary death). As opposed of being a force that brings knowledge, tolerance, and understanding to its audience, the U.S media has become an instrumental tool in polarising the society into those that support and resist the Black Lives Matter movement.

Above: Video footage from Diamond Reynold's live Facebook streaming in the after-math of Philando Castile's shooting. WARNING! Graphic Content.

This brings us to my final point, which regards those that are arguing so vividly that the movement is irrelevant, obsolete, or exaggerate (otherwise known as the #AllLivesMatter); just because in your personal experience you have never had to experience or witness racial injustice does not mean that the U.S finds itself in a ‘post-racial’ society where everyone is equal. In too many ways, everyone is very far from being equal, from the opportunities they will have in life to the dignity that they will receive in death and justice. Privilege, like its parents Racism or Sexism, has an incredibly strong grasp in twisting our perception of reality into believing and justifying the worst of human society. Those unable to admit that there is inequality and unfair suffering affecting primarily African-American and minority communities in the U.S are those who are least willing to give away their own privilege of racial blindness. The Black Lives Matter movement is not about discrediting the lives of whites or police officers. The Black Lives Matter movement is about bringing pride and justice to those who most suffer from an American heritage that ‘Others’ and destroys the black body. The Black Lives Matter movement is about realising that cultural diversity is a strength and not a weakness. The Black Lives Matter movement is about resisting the unnecessary deaths of hundreds of men and women to the hands of structural racism. The Black Lives Matter movement is about unity, justice, and pride - and we should all, regardless of our race, class, or gender, feel involved in changing this unequal reality. When we watch Diamond Reynold’s please from our Facebook live pages, we should not leave the African-American community to suffer alone, we all suffer. The Black Lives Matter movement is about human rights.

#race #usracism #trayvonmartin #philandocastile #altonsterling #policebrutality #policeracism #zimmerman #tanehisicoates #tanehisicoates #betweentheworldandme #structuralracism