Tire Nichols: the bigotry of anti-racists

[ad_1]

Tire Nichols is buried today. In Memphis, the family of Nichols, 29, will be joined by civil rights luminaries and US Vice President Kamala Harris to mourn his loss at his funeral. His death earlier this month shocked the world. On January 7, he had what turned out to be a fatal altercation with five police officers. He was arrested, allegedly for reckless driving. He was then dragged out of his car and beaten up. In police body camera footage of the encounter, released in recent days, Nichols can be heard screaming, confused by the officers’ assault. I did nothing, he said. You are really doing a lot of things right now. He managed to escape, but was apprehended a few minutes later. He was then beaten to a pulp with fists, boots and truncheons. Nichols succumbed to his injuries a few days later. The officers who did this to him have since been fired and charged with second degree murder, aggravated kidnapping and other offences.

There are so many questions hanging over this horrific killing. It’s hard to understand why a traffic stop involving five officers and a skinny, unarmed man apparently required so much violence and aggression. Some have suggested that these men were never fit to serve in the first place. Apparently, at least two of Memphis’ five cops joined the force after it relaxed its terms of employment, in a desperate bid for more candidates. One officer, Demetrius Haley, had previously been sued by a man who accused Haley of beating him while he was in prison (Haley was a prison guard at the time). The special unit the men belonged to, named SCORPION, tasked with policing the more volatile parts of the city, was disbanded after Nichols’ death, reflecting fears about the depth of the rot.

How did it happen? What can we do to eliminate cops like that? What police practices or societal structures might contribute to these rare but horrific cases? Where does this sadistic violence perpetrated by a small number of cops come from? These are the points on which any sensible debate would turn. But, of course, all of those questions have already been eclipsed by The Conversation. The one we are told must take place in the aftermath of every act of American police brutality. The one about racism and white supremacy and their supposedly endless hold on the United States and the rest of the western world.

All of this is deeply wrong. When it comes to considering police brutality in modern America, which for all its flaws is not the Jim Crow South, talking about white supremacy obscures rather than illuminates. The idea that young black men are hunted down by racist police is an apocalyptic myth. A landmark 2016 study by a Harvard economist found that when all variables are controlled, black Americans are no more likely to be shot by police than white Americans. Roland Fryer, the man behind the study, called it the most surprising finding of my career. Images of white cops killing black citizens naturally stir up terrible historical memories, but police brutality in America today is not a strictly racial phenomenon. Scour the internet and you will find stories of poor and working class men of all pigmentations meeting terrible ends at the hands of overzealous, poorly trained or unbalanced officers.

That we are asked to perform the same dance following the murder of Nichols is particularly grotesque. All the officers he was beaten by are black. The Memphis police chief is also black. Like 58% of the Memphis police force. But that hasn’t stopped endless speculation about systemic racism within its ranks. The mental gymnastics were spectacular. When it comes to police brutality, race matters, but maybe not the way you think it does, Van Jones writes on CNN. Ultimately, it is the race of the victim being brutalized and not the race of the violent cop that is most relevant in determining whether racial bias is a factor in police brutality. He says it’s hard to imagine white cops killing white people in similar circumstances, blissfully unaware that many high-profile stories of police brutality against black people in recent years have turned out to have cases of white counterparts in which police behavior was eerily similar. , but the victim was white.

When confronted with people puzzled by the claim that black cops killing black people is an expression of white supremacy, these commentators simply say they weren’t thinking enough. Not only is this a simplistic and illogical argument, said an Independent commentator, chastising those who would dare bring up the skin color of the Memphis cops, “but this one was meant to distract us from our fight.” I’m about to educate some people right now, Briton Shola Mos-Shogbamimu told Sky News the other day, before spouting out something completely nonsensical. There will be people watching right now, first of all, because they’re black police, that means it’s not racist. No, that means you haven’t educated yourself on how systemic white supremacy works.

Statements like this seem to nod to higher wisdom. Just because you can’t see racism in a given situation doesn’t mean there isn’t it, it has been said. Words like systemic and structural make the analysis sophisticated, almost scientific. In truth, it relies on a mixture of mind-reading and blind faith. In the case of the alleged Tire Nichols killers, this amounts to assuming that these black men bear the marks of internalized racism. That they are the mere foot soldiers of racist whites. It’s surprisingly easy, writes this freelance columnist, to train people to hate their own, illegally detain them, abuse them, and end their lives.

Surprisingly easy. Just think about it for a minute. These commentators are so desperate to polish their narrative of rampant racism that they rehabilitate some deeply questionable tropes. Like these blacks, black cops, in this case, are unintelligent, visceral, and therefore easily manipulated by white supremacists. That they lack agency and accountability for their actions. In this dark and identity vision, blacks are reduced either to the pitiful victims of white supremacy, or to its idiot minions. Meanwhile, the much simpler explanation here that the Nichols case has nothing to do with race or racism isn’t entertained even for a moment.

This macabre tendency to exploit every black man killed to make a political point, to pose against white supremacy, even when his death has nothing to do with racism, is repugnant. But it keeps happening. Take the case of Tekle Sundberg, a young man of African descent shot dead by police last summer after a standoff lasting several hours. Apparently in the midst of a serious mental health crisis, Sundberg began shooting into his neighbors’ apartment, narrowly missing a wife and her two young children. Activists tried (and failed) to make him the next Black Lives Matter saint, even though his stray bullets could very easily have killed the two black children next door.

Police violence in modern America is not a racial problem. Indeed, the worst thing that has happened to this debate in recent years is that it has become so intensely racialized. This has obscured the roots of the problem, corroded social solidarity and made the prospect of change all the less likely. These activists are not even interested in change. All they care about is keeping their narrative alive, even when the case in question doesn’t match up in the slightest. This macabre anti-racism has become the biggest obstacle to creating the truly post-racial society we need.

Tom Slater is editor of spiked. Follow him on Twitter: @Tom_Slater_

[ad_2]