Why indeed?
Vera Jenkins Booker was the night supervisor on duty at Good Samaritan Hospital in Selma, Ala., the night Jimmie Lee Jackson was shot by an Alabama state trooper who followed him into a restaurant and shot him at close range as he tried to protect his mother and grandfather. The date was Feb. 18, 1965, and as those who have seen the movie Selma already know, it was the first in a chain of events that would focus the eyes of the world on the brutality of racism. The 26-year-old Baptist deacon was among those marching in the tiny town of Marion in protest of the discriminatory voter registration practices of the day; he had tried unsuccessfully to register for four years, and the struggle eventually cost him his life.
Sunday March 7, 1965, about six hundred people began a fifty-four mile march from Selma, Alabama to the state capitol in Montgomery. They were demonstrating for African American voting rights and to commemorate the death of Jimmie Lee Jackson, shot three weeks earlier by an state trooper while trying to protect his mother at a civil rights demonstration. On the outskirts of Selma, after they crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge, the marchers, in plain sight of photographers and journalists, were brutally assaulted by heavily armed state troopers and deputies.
As we saw with Occupy and numerous marches to raise awareness of the brutality that seems to be solely focused on the disenfranchised, when was the last time you saw a booking photo of a bankster that looks like the police used them for a pinata?, the Marchers of Selma were brutally repressed.
Could it be that the instutional racism that gave birth to law enforcement in the South created the atmosphere of impunity in the face of cultural racism?
It is not a great secret that some of the earliest police forces were solely tasked with recapturing escaped slaves.
"In the Southern states the development of American policing followed a different path. The genesis of the modern police organization in the South is the "Slave Patrol" (Platt 1982).The first formal slave patrol was created in the Carolina colonies in 1704 (Reichel 1992). Slave patrols had three primary functions: (1) to chase down, apprehend, and return to their owners, runaway slaves; (2) to provide a form of organized terror to deter slave revolts; and, (3) to maintain a form of discipline for slave-workers who were subject to summary justice, outside of the law, if they violated any plantation rules. Following the Civil War, these vigilante-style organizations evolved in modern Southern police departments primarily as a means of controlling freed slaves who were now laborers working in an agricultural caste system, and enforcing "Jim Crow" segregation laws, designed to deny freed slaves equal rights and access to the political system.
Racism is clearly a feature not a bug. To cement the pervasiveness of this mindset we only need to look at the case of The United States v Paradise. For over a decade after being caught never daring to promote any Black officers above the rank of trooper the State of Alabama dug in its heels and fought efforts that would allow a Black officer to supervise white officers.
In 1972, upon finding that, for almost four decades, the Alabama Department of Public Safety (Department) had systematically excluded blacks from employment as state troopers in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment, the District Court issued an order imposing a hiring quota and requiring the Department to refrain from engaging in discrimination in its employment practices, including promotions. By 1979, no blacks had attained the upper ranks of the Department. The court therefore approved a partial consent decree in which the Department agreed to develop within one year a procedure for promotion to corporal that would have no adverse impact on blacks and would comply with the Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures (Guidelines), and thereafter to develop similar procedures for the other upper ranks (1979 Decree). As of 1981, however, more than a year after the 1979 Decree's deadline, no black troopers had been promoted. The court approved a second consent decree in which the parties agreed that the Department's proposed corporal promotion test would be administered to applicants, that the results would be reviewed to determine any adverse impact on blacks under the Guidelines, that the determination of a procedure would be submitted to the court if the parties were unable to agree thereon, and that no promotions would occur until the parties agreed or the court ruled upon the promotion method to be used (1981 Decree). Of the 60 blacks to whom the test was administered, only 5 (8.3%) were listed in the top half of the promotional register, and the highest ranked black was number 80. The Department then declared that it had an immediate need for between 8 and 10 new corporals and stated its intention to elevate between 16 and 20 individuals before constructing a new list. The United States objected to any use of the list in making promotions. In 1983, the District Court held that the test had an adverse impact on blacks, and ordered the Department to submit a plan to promote at least 15 qualified candidates to corporal in a manner that would not have an adverse racial impact. The Department proposed to promote 4 blacks among the 15 new corporals, but the court rejected that proposal and ordered that "for a period of time," at least 50% of those promoted to corporal must be black, if qualified black candidates were available, and imposed a 50% promotional requirement in the other upper ranks, but only [480 U.S. 149, 150] if there were qualified black candidates, if a particular rank were less than 25% black, and if the Department had not developed and implemented a promotion plan without adverse impact for the relevant rank. The Department was also ordered to submit a realistic schedule for the development of promotional procedures for all ranks above the entry level. Subsequently, the Department promoted eight blacks and eight whites under the court's order, and submitted its proposed corporal and sergeant promotional procedures, at which times the court suspended the 50% requirement for those ranks. The United States appealed the court's order on the ground that it violated the Fourteenth Amendment's equal protection guarantee. The Court of Appeals affirmed the order. "On February 10, 1984, less than two months from today, twelve years will have passed since this court condemned the racially discriminatory policies and practices of the Alabama Department of Public Safety. Nevertheless, [480 U.S. 149, 163] the effects of these policies and practices remain pervasive and conspicuous at all ranks above the entry-level position. Of the 6 majors, there is still not one black. Of the 25 captains, there is still not one black. Of the 35 lieutenants, there is still not one black. Of the 65 sergeants, there is still not one black. Of the 66 corporals, only four are black. Thus, the department still operates an upper rank structure in which almost every trooper obtained his position through procedures that totally excluded black persons. Moreover, the department is still without acceptable procedures for advancement of black troopers into this structure, and it does not appear that any procedures will be in place within the near future. The preceding scenario is intolerable and must not continue. The time has now arrived for the department to take affirmative and substantial steps to open the upper ranks to black troopers." Id., at 74 (emphasis in original)
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So after over six years the Alabama DPS still could not allow a Black officer to supervise whites.
A telling decision was that of Justice Burger who found that judges do have the authority to right grievous wrongs. And considering it is the judges in our system that are the firewalls protecting our society from vengeance based retribution the opinion is a wise one.
Because Swann explained the appropriate governing standard, it must have provided guidance to the District Court in this case and it should now guide our deliberations. Chief Justice BURGER wrote: "Once a right and a violation have been shown, the scope of a district court's equitable powers to remedy past wrongs is broad, for breadth and flexibility are inherent in equitable remedies. " 'The essence of equity jurisdiction has been the power of the Chancellor to do equity and to mould each decree to the necessities of the particular case. Flexibility rather than rigidity has distinguished it. The qualities of mercy and practicality have made equity the instrument for nice adjustment and reconciliation between the public interest and private needs as well as between competing private claims.'
Hecht Co. v. Bowles, 321 U.S. 321, 329-330 [64 S.Ct. 587, 591-592, 88 L.Ed. 754] (1944), cited in Brown [v. Board of Education, 349 U.S. 294, 75 S.Ct. 753, 99 L.Ed. 1083 (1955) ], at 300 [75 S.Ct., at 756]." 402 U.S., at 15, 91 S.Ct., at 1276. 90
In this case, the record discloses an egregious violation of the Equal Protection Clause. It follows, therefore, that the District Court had broad and flexible authority to remedy the wrongs resulting from this violation—exactly the opposite of the Solicitor General's unprecedented suggestion that the judge's discretion is constricted by a "narrowly tailored to achieve a compelling governmental interest" standard. Brief for United States 17.1
Culturally we rarely identify with other cultures, instead we like the Borg assimilate and overpower other cultures with what seems to be sheer capitalist inertia. So our efforts to keep Blacks in a subservient position is not surprising, a large poor underclass helps keep wages down, and the divide and conquer mindset is very effective in keeping the marginalized marginalized.
But enough is enough as far as letting the police be a roving gang of assassins without accountability. We the people have a voice, and like the fight for voting rights, marches, lobbying, voting, educating allies; it will take a multifaceted effort to change the status quo.
2:10 PM PT: For the quote in the title, I saw it on C-Span this morning. I reached out to Mr. Crump as well since his goals are parallel to my own.
http://www.c-span.org/...