Abstract
We are outraged at the police brutality that allows the state-sanctioned murder of Black people in the United States. Time and again we have seen Black lives cut short by the police. In addition to the actions of the police, we have repeatedly seen innocent Black people harassed or killed by their White neighbors simply because they were suspicious, were nervous, or gave in to their collective paranoia. This violence and the systemic anti-Black racism that fuels it must be dismantled.
George Floyd’s slow, drawn-out murder under the knee of a Minneapolis police officer, Derek Chauvin, while other officers looked on, is a national disgrace. The fact that his murder was precipitated by a store owner following standard procedure to report counterfeit money, which does not require arrest or physical abuse to get answers about where the counterfeit currency comes from, illustrates that even seemingly innocent “standard procedure” can result in Black people’s deaths. The fact that he survived the coronavirus only to be murdered a month later illustrates the many intersections of vulnerability Black people experience.
This disgrace is repeated over and over. Like Eric Garner, Black people are murdered in police custody on suspicion of minor infractions, using tactics that have already been banned. Like Breonna Taylor, Atatiana Jefferson, and Botham Jean, Black people are murdered by police in their homes. Like Tony McDade and Kayla Moore, Black transgender people are murdered, misgendered by police and the media, and even blamed for their own deaths. Like Tamir Rice, they are murdered for appearing to be “adults.” Like Rekia Boyd, they are murdered even when police are “off duty.” And police are not the only ones who view Black lives as expendable. Like Ahmaud Arbery, Black people are murdered by their White neighbors for jogging. Like Trayvon Martin, they are murdered by self-appointed neighborhood watches for simply walking around. Like Renisha McBride, they are murdered for seeking help after a car accident.
These patterns continue because anti-Black racism is systemic in the United States, a society whose founding and economic success was based on the institution of Black slavery. Developing a view of Black people as less than human helped justify a system of slavery and the enormous profits made from it. Once slavery formally ended, Black people were excluded from economic opportunity. The wealth passed down over generations within White families and accumulated within institutions, which fuels inequalities that survive to this day, stems largely from these historical wrongs. Sociologists’ critical work has shown how these inequalities continue to disadvantage Black people in areas of education, health, law, and academia. The United States has not confronted this past.
We must dismantle the systemic anti-Black racism endemic to the United States. This demands long-term commitment and hard work in many institutions. We call for the following steps:
First, we call upon all state and city governments to demilitarize their police departments. Police departments must undergo reviews with community representation, charged with changing allowable tactics, making all practices and incidents visible to public scrutiny, and holding police officers and leadership accountable for violations and any unnecessary use of force. We call for strong legislation that will curtail the power of police unions, making it illegal to withhold body camera footage or prevent cops who kill from being identified. Noting that Derek Chauvin had received 18 complaints and committed two other murders of unarmed Native men before he murdered George Floyd, we demand legislation making it illegal for any police department to hire officers with previous violations for excessive use of force. We call upon these governments to massively reduce the funding that is used to supply police departments with military-grade weapons and equipment that terrorize Black communities as if they are battlefields.
Second, we call for criminal justice reform at the local, state, and federal levels. The United States imprisons far more people than any other nation, and Black people are more likely to be imprisoned than Whites for the same offenses. The overuse of imprisonment destroys families and communities. We call for an end to prison sentences for misdemeanors and low-level offenses and a drastic reduction of imprisonment as a criminal justice outcome. Our criminal justice systems should focus on rehabilitation rather than ending lives and disrupting family and community ties.
Third, we call for removing police presence from schools, particularly school resource officers and security guards, who serve as a funnel to the criminal justice system. These forms of police involvement in schools have created a school-to-prison pipeline through which students, especially Black students, end up behind bars. It fuels a carceral system whereby corporations profit from the trauma and pain of Black communities and their families.
Fourth, we call for a reinvestment in Black communities. The funding diverted away from the militarization of police departments and the prison industrial complex must be directed toward strengthening schools, facilities, housing, health care, and resources used by Black communities. We call on all levels of governments to end the funding of school systems through local property taxes and instead to commit to distributing funding to schools to equalize educational outcomes across school districts.
As academics, we also recognize the need to tackle systemic racism in our own disciplines, institutions, and workplaces. Universities say they want diversity and to include Black and indigenous scholars and scholars of color, but they have not done the work of transforming their institutional structures and policies to fully incorporate their needs and interests to recruit and retain them. These words remain empty in mission statements, unevenly pursued in practice. Universities need to recognize and compensate for the unequal expectations and demands on faculty members of color, from teaching evaluations that disproportionately criticize Black instructors, to extra service obligations so that every committee is “diverse,” to the additional mentoring required of faculty members of color as students of color confront the same systemic racism as themselves. Universities must also recognize that diversifying their faculties demands more fundamental changes to the expectations of faculty roles, scholarship, and engagement. Many people of color enter the academy not just to advance debates within the ivory tower but to support and lift up their communities. There must be multiple routes to success, tenure, and promotion, including the recognition of public engagement, community partnerships, and work that has outcomes beyond traditional measures of scholarship.
These are crucial first steps to begin to address the police brutality and systemic anti-Black racism in our society. We have an opportunity to make the United States a place that truly represents the ideals of equality and justice that so many have fought for throughout its history. These values must now extend to Black people, so many of whom were brought here against their will and are still owed a debt in this society. The U.S. experiment will not succeed until Black people too have the unalienable right to life and liberty and an equal opportunity to pursue happiness in a society with no one kneeling on their necks.