There's a lot to worry about in all this. As for me, I'm concerned that the true nature of the police, the roots of its brutality in its role as the armed guards of the ruling classes, has been obscured by the racial divide. Racism is real. It's complicated.
So is class warfare.
Even if you are privileged as I am -- white, male, able-bodied, Ivy League-educated -- odds are that your interactions, like mine, with the police are generally unpleasant. Mostly, I run into them when they pull me over to give me a ticket. If I'm lucky, they are merely rude, overbearing, aggressive and condescending. Once in a blue moon, a cop manages to be merely gruff. And I'm lucky. I've seen the way cops act in black neighborhoods. It's much, much worse. They're disgusting.
I had a bad experience with a Los Angeles police officer in 2001. He arrested me for jaywalking -- falsely. He roughed me up and handcuffed me. This being America, I couldn't help wonder whether he might have targeted me because he was black and I was white. But he never said anything that indicated that. Maybe he had a quota to fill.
Black or white, the police are paid to oppress, not protect. Black or white, citizens have good cause to be afraid of them. That's the nature of the system. It's another reason the system has got to go.
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