General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: The Starbucks thing... [View all]EffieBlack
(14,249 posts)is that the culpability is joint here because without the bigotry of the manager combined with unthinking enforcement by the police officers, the men would never have been wrongly arrested.
As I've said, this kind of behavior is the essence of institutional racism. Everyone throws up their hands and says, "it wasn't MY fault! The SYSTEM made me do it!" Meanwhile black people are treated differently, are forced to endure humiliation after humiliation and worse - and then are blamed for not doing more to stop the system from abusing us while the system itself is allowed to continue functioning undisrupted.
The manager claims some made up "policy" required her to call the police on two peaceful, law-abiding black men who weren't bothering a soul and then claims (or Starbucks claims on her behalf) that she didn't MEAN for them to be arrested, she just wanted them to leave. The police come and, without making any effort to get them to leave other than to just order them out, arrest them within minutes, put them in handcuffs and march them off to jail as if they were some kind of menace to society.
And then the people defend the cops with the claim that they had NO CHOICE but to arrest them once the manager called them.
Really? Funny thing - the manager sure didn't seem to know that was their ONLY option - at least that's what she claimed afterward when she lamented that she didn't mean for them to be arrested. If she didn't mean for them to be arrested, she must have assumed the police would do something other than make an arrest in response to her call. Of course, had she really believed that, it would have been nice for her to say something when they were handcuffing the men and taking them away.
See how that works? The manager set everything into motion by calling the police but it's not HER fault they arrested the men because all she did was make the call. Everything that happened after that was solely up to the police.
The police respond to the call and promptly arrest the men but it's not THEIR fault because, once the manager called them, they had no choice but to make an arrest.
It's all bullshit, but it gives them fig leaves to hide behind and although anyone with eyes and a brain can see everyone's junk hanging out and blowing in the wind, some people can't - or refuse to - see anything but the raggedy little leaf.
THAT's how institutional racism operates and thrives.
Two innocent men went to jail because a manager and the police force worked in tandem to send them there.
But, instead of looking at the systemic process that resulted in the arrest as an integrated continuum with progressive, positive actions of two entities working in full cooperation, some people insist on zeroing in on one step at a time, bifurcating them as if they are unrelated but then arguing that the previous step made the next one inevitable and unavoidable, as if the manager and cops were unthinking cogs in a machine with no agency or power to determine whether and how the machine would operate.
So you insist it's not the cops' fault because they were just doing their jobs since, once they were called, they had no choice. You've been told every which way from Sunday why that is wrong, but you stubbornly hang on to that fig leaf because, for some reason, you seem to believe that law enforcement has no power or discretion to prevent itself from being used to enforce the whims of a bigot and has no authority to protect innocent persons from being caught in the terrifying claws of racism backed by the power and might of the badge and the gun.
But until we address how our systems help to perpetuate racism and discrimination of certain individuals and groups, we will never become a fair and equal society. And that starts with people letting go of their assumption that racism is solely an individual act of a dark heart. Yes, that's where it starts, but that's also where it would usually end unless it's given life and support and perpetuated by larger, deeper systems. It's not enough to condemn individual acts of racism but we must also recognize and root out the nasty parts of the larger system that perpetuates racism by elevating it from individual ugly but, on their own, essentially harmless acts of racism into a dangerous and powerful force that inflicts great damage on individuals, groups and the country as a whole.