Can Black Cops be Racist?
A few weeks ago a black New Orleans police officer was involved in an incident at the Treme child care center in New Orleans during which she threatened parents and drew her weapon. She was later fired but the incident led Jerome Smith, who runs the Treme center, to address the city council and charge that the incident and response by the officer’s superiors was an example of racism. Times-Picayune columnist James Gill responded in his July 30 column, arguing that since black police were the perpetrators in the incident, then it could not possibly have been an act of racism.
Following this logic, it would be impossible for African Americans in New Orleans to ever make a legitimate claim that they are victims of racism. Since a significant percentage of the city’s white-controlled organizations and agencies have black leadership, these groups too, would be immune to charges of racism.
The problem rests with the use of the term “racism” to mean the beliefthat whites are biologically or intellectually superior to blacks. Using that definition, I agree that it would be impossible for black police, who serve under black administrators, to be racist. But that definition of racism is outdated and limited and does not reflect the new social science research on the many forms of racism (institutional,structural, cultural) that goes beyond the idea of racism as individual prejudice.
For example, following the French colonial tradition, African Americans owned slaves and participated in slave patrols in Louisiana: does that mean slavery was not a “racist” institution or slaves caught by black patrollers were wrong to say that it was a “racist” injustice? No, it simply means that the terms “slavery” and “racism” are definitions based on generalizations about ideologies and social systems. The terms describe the general functions of systems and ideologies and, like all definitions, they have exceptions. In 1990 civil rights icon James Meredith once campaigned for long-time Klan leader David Duke: that did little to acquit Duke of his racism.
Before Katrina, blacks were clearly the political majority in New Orleans, comprising 70% of the population; they exercised significant control over many of the institutions of daily life (city government, police, courts, education, and even to some degree healthcare for the uninsured, i.e. legislative control of Charity Hospital). Acting from a position of power, African Americans generally perceived police abuse as a political problem, not a racial issue. If the police misbehaved, it was due to bad management by black elected officials who could be lobbied or replaced.
No one could reasonably say that blacks control New Orleans today. With less than 30% of their population returned, compared to nearly 70% of the white population, the last two elections demonstrated that blacks are now the electoral minority. Even with a black mayor, African Americans no longer control most of the education system and they have lost their majority on the city council. Moreover, the long tradition initiated under black majority rule of setting aside one of the at-large council seats for the racial minority was repudiated by whites in the last election, signaling that whites were not interested in sharing power now that they were the majority. My reading of the black community is that most believe that the prolonged diaspora, prohibitively high rents, and the plans to purge 100,000 black voters from the rolls, will result in the election of a white Mayor and even stronger white majority council by 2010.
This radical demographic and political transformation has profoundly changed the perception of who actually rules the city–who has the power and influence to force elected officials to resign or cut funding to punish dissent. So when Jerome Smith says that he sees racism when
black cops act as if they can abuse black people with impunity in his neighborhood, I interpret this as saying that blacks are now a powerless minority, dispossessed of a city they once controlled, and that the color of the agents of their oppression does not change who ultimately holds power and who is accountable.
I don’t think the distinction between prejudice and racism is academic. We cannot bridge the growing racial divide in New Orleans if we deny that blacks have legitimate reasons for feeling that they suffer discrimination at the hands of a new governing class–be the agents of that discrimination black or white.
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