“Nobody wants policing to work correctly more than Black people.” Data has proven time and time again that America’s policing system is broken, but Michael Harriot believes the blame doesn’t fall on individual officers. Instead, he explains that until racism, education, and economic disparities are dealt with, police can’t successfully stop or solve crime fairly.
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Michael Harriot [00:00:05] Before we begin, we have to accept a few facts. Police disproportionately kill Black people. Police disproportionately arrest Black people. There is no doubt about that. Police disproportionately stop, frisk and search Black people. There is no doubt about that. But is it the police’s fault? Well, that’s why I want to welcome you to theGrio Daily, the only podcast that’ll tell you it’s not their fault. Yeah. So when we talk about police brutality, police abuse and the failures of the criminal justice system, a lot of people think that we are condemning individual cops and it’s not quite that way. Right. Like, if you see a blue light in your rearview mirror, you might be nervous or afraid for your life if you are Black. But it ain’t that police officer’s fault. Like if you see a cop that you’ve never seen before, you don’t think that individual cop might shoot you, you say, “Well, I’ve seen cops kill Black people.” Even if you’ve never seen that cop. When we make these criticisms, we’re not criticizing individual cops or the motives who criticize the system, the system that allows them to kill people without impunity, the system that allows them to arrest Black people with no evidence, the system that allows them to exist in a space where they troll, stop, frisk, search and do all this stuff that the data shows that they do to Black people with unequal consequences. They never suffer the consequences for the stuff that they do, especially when they do it to Black people. But that’s not the individual officer’s fault. Right. They work inside a system. And it’s important to understand that when you talk about policing, because they get so defensive of the people who are pro-police, they say we’re demonizing cops. Nobody’s demonizing cops. Trust me. Nobody wants policing to work correctly more than Black people.
Michael Harriot [00:02:19] But there is another issue that I like to talk about, right? When I talk about policing and it’s all the other issues. So when we talk about the issues that are involved with policing, you can’t separate them from, for instance, economics, right? Because we know that crime is a socioeconomic phenomenon. People who are poorer commit more crime because, you know, most crimes are crimes of desperation. People who are less educated create more crimes and people who have no other choice but to be subjected to, for instance, systems of violence, poor school systems, inequality. They are more likely to commit crimes. We know that. Right. And so we tell police to go out there and stop the criminals and solve crimes. But how can they do that when all the other stuff is broken? How can they stop something with a badge and a gun that’s caused by education disparities, by economic disparities, by let’s be frank, plain ole racism? For instance, let’s say you live in a neighborhood with, you know, poor unemployment. Black people are twice as likely to be unemployed as white people. Even employed Black people make less than white people with the same education and experience. A Black college graduate is less likely to be employed than a white high school dropout. I mean, there’s statistics that I could rattle off all day, but the education statistics that I just talked about are contributors to crime. And we want police to decrease crime by, you know, making teachers a racist, making sure the schools teach children what they’re supposed to learn, making sure the school boards fund Black schools equally. No, the police can’t do that. It ain’t they fault. Right.
Michael Harriot [00:04:25] Here’s a good right. So we know that employers, when they see an application or a resumé with a Black sounding name, they are more likely to not even invite that person for an interview. We know employers are more likely to hire employees with the same education and experience if the job candidate is recommended by a white person. We know that employers routinely dismiss Black people with higher qualifications than white candidates because of plain old racism. And when unemployment is high, you could almost track crime rates with unemployment. So how are police supposed to affect unemployment? Should they just barge into corporate headquarters with their guns and say, “Let me see your applications, all the ones that you throw in the trash, we’re going to arrest you for it, if they’re disproportionately Black?” Nah, police can do that. Want to fight crime. It ain’t the police fault. Or here’s a good one. Like imagine during COVID, right. So doing COVID crime soared. It still hasn’t gone back to pre-COVID levels. And it’s partly because the COVID epidemic or the pandemic gave us the worst economic downturn in the history of this country. The decrease in employment, it was bigger than it was during the Great Depression. It’s the largest economic downturn in the history of this country. So, of course, crime is going to soar because we just said employment is a factor in crime. Education is a factor in crime. And, of course, schools closed. Test scores went down, still trying to rebound. And because of that crime surge, we said, “Aye, what we should do is we should hire more cops.” How? How are they supposed to stop these people from getting sick?
Michael Harriot [00:06:28] Like, we know that, for instance, lack of health care is a socio-economic fact, and those socio-economic factors contribute to crime. They contribute to stuff like poor credit scores because you owe the hospital. And if you live in a state that doesn’t expand Medicare, you’re more likely to have medical debt on your credit report. And if you’re more likely to have bad credit, you don’t have access to capital and resources that people with good credit have, not with more money, which is credit. Right. Like if you just pay your bills. And of course, all of those economic factors contribute to crime. I don’t even know if you know this, but like a lot of people in jail don’t have good credit. And then we want police to stop it. A lot of this ain’t their fault. But here’s the thing. We know the education system is broken in America. We know that majority Black school districts get funded about $2,000 less than majority white school districts. We know that most Black children attend schools that are majority Black. We know that schools that are majority Black have even fewer books in the libraries. We know they have less access to technology. So education system is broken along racial lines. That is a fact. We know that the healthcare system in this country is broken. We know that even third year medical students believe that Black people are more resistant to pain. We know that a Black pregnant woman is more likely to die giving birth to a child. We know that newborn Black infants are more likely to die if they are being cared for by a white doctor. We know that majority Black zip codes have fewer primary care physicians than majority white zip codes. And all of these things are symptoms of a broken healthcare system.
Michael Harriot [00:08:26] We know that the economic system in America is broken. We know that credit ratings have nothing to do with how much money you make or how well you pay your bills. If you aren’t a college graduate that affects your credit score. There are some credit score ratings that factor in like what you make on the SATs, and we know there are racial disparities in standardized testing. So we know that the education system is broken. We know that the health care system is broken. We know that the criminal justice system is broken. We know that the American economy is broken. We know that the financial system is broken. We know that the political system is broken. And to solve all of those things that create crime, we give high school graduates a badge and a gun and say, “Hey, yo, go do your thing.” Now, the broken healthcare system hurts Black people. A broken education system dooms Black people to fewer opportunities. The broken economic system dooms Black people disproportionately to dent to lower credit scores. All of that, all of those broken systems impact the lives of Black people. But the doctors, the teachers, the principals, the politicians, the bankers, employers, they don’t have guns. The police have guns. So you don’t see people picketing at the bank because Black people aren’t getting shot in the face at the bank. They are still suffering the consequences of that broken system, but it just ain’t no bullet hole. When a Black mother dies at a hospital, a lot of times it’s due to a disparity but ain’t no bullet hole. When children in Black schools or when Black students are disproportionately punished and funneled into the school-to-prison pipeline, they won’t have the same opportunities as white children, but it’s hard to pinpoint that bullet hole and the police have guns.
Michael Harriot [00:10:15] And so when we’re criticizing the systems. We’re not criticizing the individual people at the bank would not criticize the individual doctors. We’re not criticizing the individual employers. Criticizing those systems that allow those disparities to exist. We are criticizing the systems and the institutions that perpetuate those disparities, not the individual. And the police have crimes. So we see the bullet holes, we see the deaths, we see the videos. And that’s why it ain’t this fault that they work in a broken system. Policing is broken. But police don’t write the laws. They don’t fund the police. They don’t determine how much training police get. They don’t determine whether a police officer can go in with a no knock warrants. They just do the things that they’re broken system tells them to do. And that’s why they shoot Black people in the face. Because to a hammer, everything is a nail into a car. Every Black person is a threat because the system tells them that.
Michael Harriot [00:11:32] That’s why you’ve got to stop blaming police. And we got to start blaming the police. When a cop shows up at your door, it’s that officer Jerry who’s at your door. It’s the police. When you’re worried about being stopped on the highway, you’re not looking for Officer Jones. You’re looking for the police. You’re looking for the representatives of a broken system that kills Black people disproportionately. It’s the system, not the individuals. And that’s what we have to concentrate on. And that’s why you have to tell your friends about the broken system and this politics. You got to download this podcast just like you want to download equality. You got to subscribe. Like we want this nation to subscribe to the equality. And of course, we always leave you with a Black saying at today’s Black saying, “It’s not f a police, it’s f the police.” We’ll see you next time on theGrio Daily. If you like what you heard, please give us a five star review. Download theGrio and subscribe to the show and to share it with everyone you know. Please email all questions, suggestions, and compliments to the podcast at theGrio dot com.
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