For many Black folks, the race of a cop is cop.

Tyre Nichols

Tyre Nichols was a 29-year old father, son, and friend. He was beaten by five Black cops. He screamed for his mother as he lay on the ground as they beat him senseless. You can hear him calling for her on the body cam tape, if you can stand to hear it again. I am certain Mr. Nichols was not more a saint than either of my guys, but I cannot imagine either of my guys being beaten to death by cops. 

Know why? They're White. Ziggy and I never had to have the talk with them about walking while white. 

Like most sentient Americans, I have watched the bodycam tapes of the murder of Tyre Nichols with horror and disgust. If the brutalization and subsequent death of Mr. Nichols wasn't already abhorrent beyond rational belief, it was made worse because the five cops were Black. And that got me to wondering. And apparently, I wasn't the only one. 

A number of sources remarked on the relative quiet of Memphis and other cities where protests and marches took place this past weekend, noting that had it been white officers who killed Mr. Nichols, the result would've been significantly different. That, in turn, makes me wonder about the division between generic cop and communities of color. 

In the Washington Post, Nikki Owens, cousin of William Green who was shot by a Black officer while handcuffed and sitting in a squad car in Prince George County, Virginia, observed:

"In America we’re taught that racism is black and white,” said Owens, who now works with the Maryland Coalition for Justice and Police Accountability. “And we are not taught about institutional or systemic racism, even though we see it everywhere. We are taught that if a Black person kills another Black person, it can’t be racist. It’s ‘Black-on-Black crime.

The important takeaway in that paragraph is the phrase institutional or systemic racism. If you haven't run into the concept, the Wikipedia definition is actually pretty good. 

a form of racism that is embedded in the laws and regulations of a society or an organization. It manifests as discrimination in areas such as criminal justice, employment, housing, health care, education, and political representation

Stokely Carmichael and Charles V. Hamilton are credited with coining the phrase in their book 

Black Power: The Politics of Liberation, but the practice has been around since clans formed villages. In America, where enlightenment supposedly happened in the 60s, systemic racism is alive and well even today. Ask any recent immigrant group; whether the folks are Somali or Hmong, in Minnesota there is more than enough racist behavior to go around. 

In the same Washington Post article, Bakari Sellers says the Tyre Nichols murder reminds him of the Black officer, J. Alexander Keung, who knelt on George Floyd's back. Keung, on his third shift ever, was a green rookie. Sellers says,

“He [Keung] talked about how he thought he could make a difference in policing...And then like three days after his hiring, he’s there watching George Floyd being brutalized and doing nothing about it. 

For many Black folks, the race of a cop is cop.”

And therein lies all the difference in the world. 

Institutional racism is an expanded matter of perception: how the targeted community is perceived (All Blacks are lazy,) how the individual is perceived (he's Jewish; I bet he knows where they keep all their money,) or how intellect is perceived (he's Asian; he thinks he's smarter than us.) It's a blanket excuse for treating others badly and it's a persistently pernicious excuse. Without addressing systemic racism, the problem with policing will never change. To address systemic racism requires that the institutions in questions admit to and come to grips with their institutional contribution to racism as practiced. And lest you forget, antisemitism is just another form of systemic and institutional racism. 

And that repair requires early childhood intervention to root out that standard.

Good luck with that. 

Right now, schools are being attacked, bombarded, maligned and otherwise prohibited from teaching about anything that wasn't the status quo in 1920. If you can't teach about the origins of slavery in these here United States, how are you going to be able to teach about institutional racism? If you cannot teach about humanity and sexuality at an appropriate age (oh, I don't know...middle school?) how are you going to explain civil and equal rights to teenagers? How are you going to teach a gay kid that there is NOTHING wrong with him/her/them? Public schools cannot pick and choose what version of the truth they're gonna permit in the classroom. 

There is no quick or easy cure to be offered. But I am certain of one thing and one thing only: if We, the People, continue to deny the existence of institutional and systemic racism, nothing will ever change. If We, the People, continue to refuse schools the right to teach our children about institutional and systemic racism, We, the People are simply wasting another generation's worth of forward motion. 

Of course, Tyre Nichols, Fernando Castile, George Floyd, William Green, and Tamir Rice will still be dead. The trick will be to prevent this kind of death from happening to others. 

The Wifely Person's Tip o'the Week

You can't go home again...but if yer feeling punk

and happen to be in the vicinity of Mam's house,

maybe she will make you chicken soup and matzah balls. 

Maybe. 

If you're nice.