The killings and counter killings by and of the Police in the US brought home the challenges to social cohesion in a society when there are deep structural factors that institutionalise and normalise oppressive actions against particular groups in a society. When the US Declaration of Independence prorated about “we the people…”, it did not include Blacks as “people”. More than a decade later, the now “free” USA defined “Black people” as three-fifths of a white person as far as political representation.
Three quarters of a century later, a Civil War between the Northern and Southern states was fought to abolish slavery in 1865. But it was not until a full century later in 1965, that a “Voting Rights Act” was passed in the midst of the Civil Rights Movement by African Americans to be invested with all rights of citizenship. The Act prohibited jurisdictions from placing hurdles in the exercise of their franchise by minorities. Only seven years earlier, the Supreme Court had ruled that segregated school for white and black students was unconstitutional.
During the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, the role of the Police in depriving Black Americans of their rights was highlighted by Malcolm X: “The police commissioner feeds the type of statistics to the white public to make them think that Harlem is a complete criminal area where everyone is prone towards violence. This gives the police the impression that they can then go and brutalise the Negroes, or suppress the Negroes, or even frighten the Negroes.”
Fifty years later, the widespread perception by the Police in the US of blacks as “criminals” – especially Black men – is still very widespread that they continue to “brutalise” African Americans with impunity. But the statistics demonstrate the situation is not as “black and white” as is frequently made out by both sides. African Americans do commit more robberies with violence on a per capita basis than whites as the Police assert. But does this justify the Police profiling every black male as a potential violent criminal? The statistics prove conclusively that they do as demonstrated by the police arrest of Professor Louis Gates of Harvard in 2009 when he had some difficulty in entering his own home in an exclusive neighbourhood.
Most male Black Americans are routinely stopped by the Police when they are driving and this practice has led to a significant number of police killings. This includes the present wave that sparked outrage and a blowback when one male African American decided to take the law into his own hands and killed five white Police Officers in retaliation.
Part of the problem has been described as due to “inherent bias”. The theory, as it has to do with the subject at hand, states that anti-black racism is so deeply ingrained in most societies, especially those influenced by Western values, that there is an unconscious bias towards negatively evaluating people of African origin in most issues. Objective psychological tests have demonstrated that even those persons who are convinced they are “non-racist” show this bias to a lesser or greater degree.
In Guyana, we do not have whites in the ruling strata as we did during the colonial period, but the authoritarian mindset established by the colonial power in the Police Force against ordinary citizens continues unabated. One has to only view the daily encounters by the traffic Police and motorists they pull over to appreciate the validity of that statement. This should be analysed for bias. In the last decade there were also charges made against local Police for exceeding their remit in particular neighbourhoods. The previous PPP/C Administration attempted unsuccessfully to comprehensively reform the Police Force away from its authoritarian roots, starting with its name which was to be changed to the “Guyana Police Service”.
Guyana should learn from the US experience and its own, and conduct a “root and branch” reform of the Police “Force”.
