Encounters with Police: Teachable Moments
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by Robert JensenA frequent lecturer on race and politics, the author was confident that he was reasonable well acquainted with the workings of racism in the United States. Attuned to the pervasiveness of white privilege, he believed himself both sophisticated and sensitive on matters of race. Then, as often happens, he was humbled by the arrival of another teachable moment.
Encounters with Police: Teachable Moments
by Robert Jensen
“These teachable moments are an important reminder that white supremacy is woven deeply into the fabric of this country.”
Honoring President Obama's request that the controversy involving a black Harvard University professor and a white Cambridge police officer become "a teachable moment," here's my contribution to an old lesson that we white people tend to be slow to learn.
In lectures about the United States' system of white supremacy and the privileges that white people have in that system, I have sometimes told a story about being stopped by police in Austin, TX.
I was driving home in a dilapidated old Volkswagen Beetle on a busy street, late at night after a long day at work. I was dressed in shorts and a t-shirt, feeling rather cranky and looking rather raggedy. Eager to get home, I saw the yellow light and gunned it. Next I saw the flashing red lights of a police car.
“I was opening the glove compartment to get the vehicle registration when out popped a small knife I keep for emergencies.”
I turned off onto a dark side street and dug in my wallet for my license. Just as the officer got to my car, I was opening the glove compartment to get the vehicle registration when out popped a small knife I keep for emergencies. I looked at the knife, looked at the white officer, and wondered what he would say.
"Sir, would you mind if I held that knife while we talked?" he asked politely. I handed him the knife and my documents, and he walked back to his car. When he returned he handed me those documents, along with a ticket, and my knife, without comment. "Please drive safely," he said. And safely I drove home.
When I told that story to illustrate white privilege, I asked people of color in the room what they imagined might have happened to them in such a situation. The black and Latino men, especially, laughed. "Do you mean before or after I'm on the ground with a gun at my head?" one of them said.
My point was not that every cop is out to harass or brutalize every person of color, but that people of color could never be sure a routine traffic stop would play out routinely. I could be reasonably sure that, barring unusual circumstances, such a stop would be uneventful. Even when the knife popped out, I didn't feel at risk.
“People of color could never be sure a routine traffic stop would play out routinely.”
I was feeling proud of myself for making this point to the mainly white audience, when I saw a hand go up. I called on the young black man, assuming he would endorse my analysis.
"You really don't get it, do you?" he said. "You think your privilege started when the cop came up to the car and saw you were white. Has it ever occurred to you that when you turned onto a dark side street you were taking your privilege for granted?"
My first response was to explain: I had been on a busy street and turned to avoid blocking traffic. I was trying to be considerate of other drivers, I said.
"I know why you did it. My point is that I would never turn onto an unlit street with a cop behind me," the young man said. "I would have pulled over and blocked traffic. I'm not going to take myself out of public view with a cop."
My next response was to feel appropriately foolish for my unwarranted self-righteousness, and then to be grateful to the man for using that teachable moment.
“'I would never turn onto an unlit street with a cop behind me,' the young man said.”
He wasn't suggesting that I be ashamed of myself, only that I recognize the burden he carries in the world that I don't. The story was one more example of the privilege that comes with being a member of the dominant group in an unjust hierarchical system. It's the same lesson men should learn about the sexual violence women face. Heterosexuals should learn it about the condemnation that lesbians and gays endure. The wealthy should learn it about the insecurity that poor and working people cope with. U.S. citizens should learn it about the fear of arbitrary authority that haunts immigrants no matter what their status.
I still tell that story when I lecture, now emphasizing that the man's comments had reminded me no one with privilege ever fully "gets it." It doesn't mean we whites -- or men, or heterosexuals, or the well off, or citizens -- are consigned to perpetual stupidity, but rather that we should never think we have it all figured out.
In this allegedly "post-racial" era, these teachable moments are an important reminder that white supremacy is woven deeply into the fabric of this country. A system as perverse and pervasive as white racism -- in all its forms, conscious and unconscious, brutal and subtle, personal and institutional -- will not end simply because we appoint black professors or elect a black president.
In this moment, we white folks should ask ourselves, after so many teachable moments, why we still have so much to learn.
Robert Jensen is a journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin and board member of the Third Coast Activist Resource Center. His latest book, All My Bones Shake: Seeking a Progressive Path to the Prophetic Voice, was published in 2009 by Soft Skull Press. He also is the author of Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity (South End Press, 2007); The Heart of Whiteness: Confronting Race, Racism and White Privilege (City Lights, 2005); Citizens of the Empire: The Struggle to Claim Our Humanity (City Lights, 2004); and Writing Dissent: Taking Radical Ideas from the Margins to the Mainstream (Peter Lang, 2002). Jensen's articles can be found online at http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~rjensen/index.html.
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In lectures about the United
In lectures about the United States' system of white supremacy and the privileges that white people have in that system, I have sometimes told a story about being stopped by police in Austin, TX.
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Legalized killers -- Brain-power dictatorship
Law enforcement are all of the intelligent middleclass, and they spend 95% of their time policing laboring men. For we laboring men never finished high school and have not the smarts to fight our way out of a paper bag.
Result being, 95% of all prisoners in jails, prisons and insane asylums are young laboring men age 14 to 40.
And so when I campaigned for Sheriff in Selma, on the platform of requiring deputies to keep their killing machines locked in the trunk until needed, how many traffic tickets do you think that cost me?
Last spring a Birmingham Alabama news paper had a video on the Internet that showed four white cops trying to murder a young black man. His van hit a cop's leg by accident, so first they tried to kill him in a high speed chase by smashing his van toward a deep ditch. And there he was thrown from his van unconscious, looking all bloody and dead for sure. Then all four cops started kicking him full blast in the head and neck. The driver recovered and is suing the police department, but last I heard none of the cops were charged.
Worshiping “other gods”
Strap a killing machine to a man’s body, and surely you end up with a god-ego that can only be appeased by adoration and worship.
Now if everyone was honest we would not need law enforcement, just pass honest laws and elect honest politicians to administer decency and order. But there is very little honor among men, least of all honorable politicians, so we need force and the lubricant that gets things done is government deadly force.
Watching how brutal the riot police in England are, beating to death on video an old man because he failed to get out of the way, I must say their almost as bad as riot police in Minneapolis or Chicago during a national convention. But there is a world of difference between our law enforcement and theirs in the relationship carried on between the law and people,
For in grand old England no cop carries a gun, and would you believe cops are actually friendly toward the people. And the all-encompassing reason is that in England law-abiding people are never subjected to the deadly force of government.
Its like last spring at a grocery store a little girl in front of me shaking and lightly sobbing. So I looked up at her mother who then said, “She sees the policemen, I don’t know why she’s so afraid of him?” So I said to her, “Its not the cop, its the killing machine strapped to his body.” So why all this excessive show of force, all this state sponsored terror that accomplishes nothing but make little girls cry.
Friendship with stranger having a gun strapped to his body, especially a stranger who can legally kill you if he feels there is probable cause, surely this is an impossibility. For there are old friends who we know from experience intend us no harm, and there are strangers with a smile who come to us with no ability to do the slightest harm. For life is short, we all live a doomed existence and nothing gives us more stress then the thought of being in harms way.
For a new law I pray, if a cop needs a gun make him carry it in his hand, that's what I always say.
It all depends on stress
It all depends on stress, and if the sight of a legalized killer gives you stress.
Now it your of college level intelligence, then you feel comfort at the sight of killing machines strapped to the bodies of men licensed to kill. For you need protection from men impoverished who are not to happy about your having excessive wealth.
Whereas if your a laboring man then you know that legalized killers are hired to kill you.
Comes now Professor Gates to be treated like a “lower class” laboring man, and all of the stuck-up intelligent middleclass to be absolutely incensed and outraged.