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| Photo by Tyre Nichols. |
The big reaction on the right to the murder of Tyre Nichols by the five Memphis police officers who beat him to death on the suspicion that he might have been "driving recklessly" has been to deny that racism had anything to do with it, because the cops in question were Black, like their victim.
"pure evil" isn't a concept you can use in social science--not really a concept at all, more a cry of helplessness
— Beep Beep Yer Yas (@Yastreblyansky) January 29, 2023
We heard the same thing after Freddie Gray was caught avoiding police and having a (legal) knife in his shirt pocket, and rattled to death—a ride so rough it severed his spine—in the police van taking him to the station in 2015, and three of the six cops involved, including the driver, were African American. But I think it's a good deal more anxious and urgent now, maybe because we're in the age of George Floyd and they're feeling more threatened than before.
Ostensibly there's a rational argument here, that it doesn't make sense to suggest that Black officers could do something racist against Black citizens, or uphold white supremacy, though it's also self-evidently wrong, or if you prefer racist in its own right (you're seriously arguing that a person's race prevents them from experiencing a particular emotion?). But it's starting to read to me like a panicky defense of racism: "Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, racism could not possibly be guilty of this terrible crime—it was miles away at the time."
There's something protective of racism in it, as in this response to Jamelle Bouie:
Ok, I see your point that maybe it's possible. But what evidence is there that THIS incident was due to white supremacy? Is there literally any example you can give of a tragic event that happens to a black person that happened for a reason other than white supremacy?
— Paper Hustle (@sendero_dorado) January 29, 2023
It is the institution of the police in segregated neighborhoods, NYC to Memphis, that is white supremacist, not (necessarily) individual cops. (Though you have to ask what kind of person is attracted to the job of belonging to what amounts to an occupying colonial army.)
— Beep Beep Yer Yas (@Yastreblyansky) January 29, 2023
This is why diversifying the police force isn't enough. You need to diversify the neighborhoods, and not just by race--you need relatively poor whites and relatively wealthy Blacks. In this way you create a community in which the cops can be members instead of occupiers.
— Beep Beep Yer Yas (@Yastreblyansky) January 29, 2023
I don't have any great solutions to offer, just a warning on the way we think about the situation--that we need to stop focusing on who is and who isn't a racist, and move on to the racism of the system, like the structure of our neighborhoods.
— Beep Beep Yer Yas (@Yastreblyansky) January 29, 2023
What bothers me is that the attack on the people ("pure evil") is in defense of the injustice that breeds them.
It occurred to me that I was really introducing critical race theory here, without having any deep understanding of it, critical in that "the point is to change it", as the man said, and I didn't know how to work myself out of the thread until sometime later when a relevant thing dropped into my inbox:
And I'd urge everybody to spend some time with people who think about these matters professionally, like the historian Thomas Zimmer, whose substack lays out the issues of Tyre Nichols and his Black attackers really well. https://t.co/g7sPNw8IqB
— Beep Beep Yer Yas (@Yastreblyansky) January 29, 2023
So do read that if you get a chance.
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