Police Killings Won’t Stop Until U.S. Comes to Grips with its Racist Foundations

Dr. Gerald Horne
INTERVIEWED BY PAUL JAY, FOUNDING EDITOR AND CHIEF CORRESPONDENT, THE REAL NEWS NETWORK
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Gerald Horne and Paul Jay discuss the roots of police killing people of color in the American history of slavery, the elite policy that produces poverty and racism, and the laws that police officers are expected to enforce in order to maintain superexploitation and economic inequality

Dr. Gerald Horne holds the John J. and Rebecca Moores Chair of History and African American Studies. His research has addressed issues of racism in a variety of relations involving labor, politics, civil rights, international relations and war. He has also written extensively about the film industry. Dr. Horne received his Ph.D. in history from Columbia University and his J.D. from the University of California, Berkeley and his B.A. from Princeton University.

Transcript

Police Killings Won't Stop Until U.S. Comes to Grips with its Racist Foundations

There’s now a cliché in the United States that says we need an honest conversation about “race.” We actually need an honest conversation about racism. More than that, we need an honest conversation about the founding of the United States of America, that strips away the mythology that suggested that this was a flawless revolt against British rule, when we all know that slaves did not necessarily benefit from this revolt against British rule. Certainly, the Native American population did not benefit.

And what came to be as a result of the founding of the United States was a culture that always feared the possibility of slave revolts, that led to the construction of so-called slave patrols, which then led to the formation of modern-day police departments. And modern-day police departments have yet to shed their role as an enforcer of law, in the first place, against poor black people. And that’s what you saw in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. That’s what you saw in Minnesota just the other day. Until we come to grips with that basic phenomenon, that is to say, this idea that there was this great leap forward for humanity in 1776, despite the fact that it was a great leap backwards for people of African descent in particular, until we come to grips with that anomaly, we’re always going to be witnessing these kinds of tragedies that we’ve seen in the past 72 hours.

Yes, it’s dangerous to be a cop. But there are many occupations that are far more dangerous. And to say because someone’s lying on the ground, and maybe they have a gun, you can’t even see one–the bottom line here for me is if you can’t figure out when it’s appropriate to shoot or not, there’s no gun in sight, there’s no direct threat in sight, then don’t–you shouldn’t be a cop. But the reason people, cops, think they can get away with this is that they can.

He doesn’t tell that to any other communities. When the LBGT community comes to him with specific demands he doesn’t tell them that he’s the president of all the people. Obviously that’s a dodge. Perhaps Mr. Obama is surrendering to the mass white racism in this society. What I mean is that if you look back at his presidency, a turning point was the summer of 2009 when Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. was arrested in his own home by a Cambridge, Massachusetts police officer. This was obviously a stupid error by the officer, and Mr. Obama took the side of the professor. But in the white racist community, which is more than a minority of that particular community, there was outrage. It was felt that he should have sided with the police officer. And therein you begin to see the decline of what was already a rather low popularity rating of Mr. Obama in that particular community.

So historians are going to have to grapple with this particular fact: Have we reached this nadir in terms of what used to be called race relations because of white racism on a mass basis? Or does the particular fecklessness of Mr. Obama have something to do with it?

Paul Jay

Speaking of which, it’s very easy to look at these police killings–look at Eric Garner, a man trying to support his family in Staten Island a few years ago selling cigarettes, apparently, and then is wrestled to the ground and suffocated. The case in Baton Rouge just a day or so ago. A young black man trying to support his family by selling CDs. And he is wrestled to the ground and then shot, apparently. What society is telling these men is that you cannot even support your family by being an entrepreneur, even though entrepreneurial activity routinely is celebrated in this society.

“Regarding the Castile killing, who had a permit to carry, the NRA, which supports the right to bear arms, has been conspicuously silent…”

And I think that this says something about the society, and it says something, quite frankly, about where we’re heading, which does not seem to be in a promising direction.

Now, this is telling, because it’s a direct reflection of the fact that a poor black man, a poor, working-class black man, presumably, is not able to speak in the language of class, a vocabulary that has been systematically suppressed. And so, therefore, he reverts to the language of race. And in fact–

HORNE: It has to be taken with a grain of salt, of course, because the police chief also tried to throw dust in the eyes of the public by referencing Black Lives Matter, as if they had something to do with this slaying in Dallas.

But in any case, my wider point is that if you look at, say, the New York Times coverage of Brexit, for example, they’re lamenting the fact that Labour Party strongholds voted for Brexit, and apparently Labour Party strongholds have been infected with the virus of anti-immigrant bias. But what the New York Times doesn’t tell its readers is that that’s a direct outgrowth of the Thatcherites’ oppression of the miners union, of unions in general, which has its counterpart on this side of the Atlantic.

In other words, the Trump phenomenon, and this neofascist phenomenon in Europe, does not come out of the blue. It’s a direct outgrowth of policies that have been systematically pursued by elites on both sides of the Atlantic, including in Baton Rouge, and Minnesota, and in Dallas.

So what that means is that poor, young black people in cities like Dallas and in Staten Island and in Minnesota and in Louisiana oftentimes cannot express their rage and frustration and anger through organizational channels. It’s oftentimes expressed, I’m afraid, in [inaud.] manner that can lead to tragedies. For example, what presumably happened in Dallas just 24 hours ago.

JAY: All right. Thanks very much for joining us, Gerald.

HORNE: Thank you.

JAY: Thank you for joining us on the Real News Network.

End

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About the author
Paul Jay (born 1951) is a journalist and filmmaker who founded and is CEO of The Real News Network. Jay was born and raised in Toronto[1] and holds dual-citizenship with the United States. Jay is the nephew of screenwriter Ted Allan.[2] A past chair of the Canadian Independent Film Caucus (now called DOC), the main organization of documentary filmmakers in Canada, Jay is the founding chair of the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival. He chaired the Hot Docs! board for its first five years.[1]