During the June 8 edition of CNN’s Legal View with Ashleigh Banfield the show’s host questioned Gary Bledsoe, the NAACP chapter head in Texas about McKinney, Texas cop’s actions at a pool party over the weekend.
?Apart from the visual that the video provides us that it looks like [a] majority of the kids, not all of them, but a majority of the kids are black and the particular officer in the video and one other are white what makes this an issue for the NAACP??
Banfield agreed that any event where a fourteen-year-old girl in a bikini is being manhandled by police is troubling, but failed to see the racial component involved in the incident, repeatedly claiming that she, ?failed to see where the racial issue comes in other than just the fact that she happens to be black.?
Her belief that, ?otherwise if it had been a white fourteen year old girl it would just be an unruly teen perhaps being treated badly?? is a clear example of the level of ignorance white society seems to have when discussing racial injustice with respect to policing.
In fact, according to the American Psychological Association, ?Black boys as young as 10 may not be viewed in the same light as childhood innocence as their white peers, but are instead more likely to be mistaken as older, be perceived as guilty and face police violence when accused of a crime.?
The study which tested 176 police officers, mostly white males, and average age 37, looked for two distinct types of bias ? prejudice and unconscious dehumanization of black people.
The study described use of force as, ?takedown or wrist lock; kicking or punching; striking with a blunt object; using a police dog, restraints or hobbling; or using tear gas, electric shock or killing.? It ultimately found that, ?Only dehumanization and not police officers? prejudice against blacks ? conscious or not ? was linked to violent encounters with black children in custody, according to the study.?
The study also found that 264 mostly white female undergraduate students, ?judged children up to 9 years old as equally innocent regardless of race, but considered black children significantly less innocent than other children in every age group beginning at age 10.?
The study shows that participants overestimated the age of blacks by an average of 4.5 years and found them more culpable than whites or Latinos.
The case of Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old black child fatally shot in a Cleveland park is a clear example of the effects this bias has on society’s view of black young people.
The shooting took place in November after a citizen spotted Rice with what turned out to be toy gun and called 911.
“The guy keeps pulling it out,” the 911 caller said, according to WKYC. “It’s probably fake, but you know what, he’s scaring the (expletive) out of (inaudible)… He’s sitting on the swing right now, but he keeps pulling it in and out of his pants and pointing it at people. Probably a juvenile, you know?? I don’t know if it’s real or not, you know?”
Approximately two seconds after police arrived at the scene Rice was shot and died of his wounds.
In the case of the Texas pool party, Banfield wasn’t alone in her failings to understand the racial components involved. Fox’s Tom Shillue claimed that the video, ?Didn’t shock me at all.? Shillue claimed that the teen ?was intimidating the cop.?
Lou Dobbs, host of Fox Business, of course understood the level of intimidation a fourteen-year-old black girl in a bikini can have, which caused him to question, ?What in the world are police supposed to do when people refuse to obey?? Naturally, draw a deadly weapon on the unarmed swim attire-clad teens.
Of course, Sean Hannity was afraid that the office might be fearing, ?A shank in the back.?
In fact, according to CNN’s Nick Valencia, many of the residents sided with the McKinney police officer claiming that the officer was justified.
Valencia interviewed an unnamed witness who claimed that the officer was being taunted by the black teens and that he was eventually attacked from behind. She even went so far as to proclaim that the officer deserved a medal.
However, none of what the ?witness? said is supported by the video that has surfaced.
What is clear from the video is that the officer forces a number of black teens onto the ground, cursing and berating them, who moments before were having a calm conversation with another officer. It is clear from the footage that the officer felt justified in using a high level of force on these black teens.
Such justification is based on fear of minority groups.
Fear of black people isn’t anything new to American society. However, a study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, found that support for policies that exacerbate racial inequality in policing grew as white people became aware of racial disparities.
What Hetey and Eberhardt’s research shows is that when faced with evidence that policies disproportionately affect black people, white society seems to be in favor of said policies.
This implicit bias to treat black young people as being deserving of harsher treatment at the hands of police and the justice system than their white counterparts is at the heart of the recent events across the country.
Baltimore city councilman Brandon Scott and activist and CEO of Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle, Adam Jackson, attempted to educate Sean Hannity about the ?racist policies and policing practices? prevalent in our society.
Hannity seemed to be unwilling to acknowledge the greater condition of institutional racism that perpetuates the legacy of white supremacy in our country.
That media outlets fain ignorance of the racial components serves only to further the belief that white America is justified in their fear of black people and should continue to push polices that create an atmosphere of dehumanizing treatment of minorities.
