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Susan Estrich: The Reality of Racism
“They don’t know that you teach at Harvard when you’re at Fenway Park,” my friend Harry Edwards used to say about living in Boston in the late ‘70s. Back then, Boston did more than its share to earn a bad reputation among black professionals.
Today, Massachusetts has a black governor. The Celtics no longer go out of their way to make sure they have white players. Black fans try as hard as everyone else to find a ticket to Fenway.
And every black I know, male or female, will tell you that black men are treated differently by the police than white men every day of the week.
Why wouldn’t they be?
Police departments look very different than they did 20 or 30 years ago, more like the communities they police. You see more women and more minorities, and far more emphasis on community involvement, community policing and building trust.
All of that is definitely better. Tensions have been reduced. Police can do their jobs better as part of the community than from the outside looking in.
But none of that matters very much so long as three-quarters of the inmates are black and Hispanic men.
Assume you’re a police officer and you get a report of a possible break-in. You go to the house and find an angry black man. It might be his house. It might not be. Probably he won’t kill you. Probably.
Would it have been different if it were my home? Sure. Not long ago, the police came to my house because a neighbor behind me saw someone (my handyman) going in my backdoor. Everyone couldn’t have been nicer. I wasn’t angry. I would’ve offered coffee if I’d made some. There was certainly no reason for the police to be afraid, once they saw me. All very pleasant.
I don’t blame professor Henry Gates for reacting to the confrontation with all the anger and hostility built up after years of putting up with slights, confronting stereotypes, trying to tear down brick walls gracefully while all the time being viewed as someone who might have been wearing a prison jumpsuit in the not-so-distant past.
But his anger was directed at the wrong target. I wish Gates and other black leaders would get mad not at the police who behave rationally but at the young, and not so young, hoodlums and hooligans who make it rational to treat black men differently.
There’s a great song in “Avenue Q” about how “everyone’s a little bit racist sometime.” We all are. An afternoon in the Loehmann’s dressing room will prove that, in a multilingual chorus. But the most pernicious racism, in the long run, is the kind that is rooted in undeniable reality. The challenge is not to change our attitudes, but to change the reality. Doing that will take more than a few beers on the White House lawn.
— Best-selling author Susan Estrich is the Robert Kingsley Professor of Law and Political Science at the USC Law Center and was campaign manager for 1988 Democratic presidential nominee Michael Dukakis. Click here to contact her.
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» on 08.04.09 @ 07:16 AM
Susan,
I think what has not been asked here is why these people ended up as hoodlums. The answer of how to address the racism question is far more complicated than what you suggest. As one who continues to be profiled, I can tell you that I too respond as General Colin Powell suggests and that is to “suck it up” when it happens instead of escalating an already humiliating experience. But that doesn’t solve the problem and doesn’t make it any less painful.
victor
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» on 08.04.09 @ 07:36 AM
Wow, a white person actually said it. I hope she doesn’t get lynched by the media.
I grew up on the East Side of SB and can tell you she is right. Change has to start at the source.
That means parents need to change the way their kids behave and grow up. These kids need to take responsibility for their actions as young adults.
I am Hispanic and have been treated badly by Police at times. THen again, I know why.
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» on 08.04.09 @ 09:06 AM
The democrats have really hurt the image of the black people of this nation. The failed welfare program has tarnished their image. The liberals want to keep the blacks poor through welfare That has created anger in the black community—Crime-food stamps, free welfare money, prison, no father—free health care, Paid money to have kids—thats how people see the blacks in our once great nation—
50 years of no dignity because of welfare-Thanks Democrats
Government dependency—keep them poor for votes…
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» on 08.04.09 @ 12:23 PM
Estrich and Garza are both right.
If you live in an urban area where three-quarters of all arrests and convictions are
people (mostly men) of color, and you receive a phone call about a potential home
break-in in progress, and the first thing you see is two men of color apparently jiggering with the front door, all your training tells you they might be real suspects,
so you act (and over-react) accordingly.
On the other hand, people of color in urban areas are also people who often grew up in neighborhoods where nutrition, youth activities, pre-school, tutoring, intact family, quality public education, small class size, top teachers, job prospects, were often in short supply. Neighborhoods where weapons, anger, discrimination, drugs too often were not.
There are reasons why urban men of color are at greater risk of involvement with
the judicial-penal system.
Part of it just goes back to issues of where to invest limited funds? To prevent, or treat, illness? The former is almost always cheaper than the latter. But goverment
usually shorts the first in favor of the second.
Speaking of angry, jet-lagged Harvard Professor Gates, do people still ask why we
spend more each year to put these at-risk (mostly) men into state prisons than we do to send them to college prep schools, help them graduate, then go to Harvard?
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