RAMONA PEREZ: Hello and welcome to part two
of the American Anthropological Association's
webinar on the Persistence of Racialized Police
Brutality and Community Responses to these
Traumas.
My name is Ramona Perez. I am a professor
of anthropology and Director of the Center
for Latin American Studies at San Diego University,
and I currently serve as our incoming president
to the American Anthro Association.
I am a light-skinned Mexican-American woman
who goes by she/her/hers with white hair,
hazel-green eyes, and I am wearing a black
blouse with large floral embroidery and red
chandelier earrings.
On behalf of the nearly 10,000 members of
the American Anthropological Association,
the largest professional association of anthropologists
in the world, I want to thank you for joining
us today as we continue our conversation on
how to address the inequities and violence
against Black lives, as well as the lives
of Indigenous and other racialized people.
As we get started, I would like to give a
brief overview of how our webinar will function
today.
You've logged into the Zoom webinar format,
which is different than the Zoom conference
format.
At the bottom of your screen, you should see
the category of Q&A.
For most of you, it will be next to the chat
link.
Throughout the webinar, you can type in your
questions for our panelists and Jeff Martin,
the Director of Communications for the American
Anthro Association, and Daniel Ginsberg, our
Director of Education and Professional Practice,
will read through your questions and bring
them to our panel to answer.
The webinar has heightened security that includes
muting each attendee and preventing anyone
from accessing the screen, so the Q&A function
will be your mode of creating questions for
our panelists.
The chat function is available, and please
feel free to use it to communicate with each
other, but our panelists will not be following
the chat.
So again use the Q&A for questions for them.
Closed captioning is available through the
CC link at the bottom of the screen, and each
of us will describe ourselves as I previously
did for those with limited or no visual access.
If you have any problems with any of these
details, please locate Nell's, N-E-L-L, name
in the chat, and direct your question to her,
and she can help with any technical difficulties.
I'd like to acknowledge that we have about
200 people in attendance today, many of whom
are not anthropologists, for that reason,
I would like to clarify who we are and why
we have something to say about racialized
police brutality and our communities' responses.
About two years ago, the American Anthropological
Association created a task force to address
the issues of racialized police brutality
and extrajudicial violence.
We put together many resources that are available
on the AAA website that include a list of
anthropologists whose work addresses this
phenomena, as well as materials for teaching.
The webinar that we held two weeks ago was
another project of the task force and had
already been set in motion while George Floyd
was still alive and working toward his tomorrow.
In our first webinar, we began the conversation
on the defunding and demilitarization of the
police, what consequential steps should be
taken regarding new training and hiring, and
what we as anthropologists can be doing on
our campuses and in our communities.
The video of that webinar and our discussion
is now live and available on the American
Anthro Association YouTube channel.
We're posting the link in the chat section
right now.
This second part takes up the questions from
our audience that we were unable to address
and incorporates what has been happening in
the last two weeks as communities, police
forces, legislators and other government officials
have responded or have not responded to the
demand for violence against Black lives to
end.
We assert that the violence manifested by
police against Black lives is deeper and broader
than the encounters that have been and continue
to be made visible.
Racism is structural.
It is embedded in our history as a nation
and in global interactions that manifest in
every day practices.
While many social sciences advance our understanding
of culture and society, and in particular,
how these encapsulate racism, it is cultural
anthropology's commitment to community-based
engagement that documents how people actually
experience these phenomena and how they strategize
their lives around it.
Our four panelists are ethnographers who dedicated
their research lives to the communities with
whom they work. They are experts on the lived
experience of Black communities, of police
forces, and of anthropology's engagement between
these two entities.
We don't have all the answers, but what we
have is knowledge gained from working at the
community level, including the community of
policing and how these experiences create
our responses and our reactions.
Our panelists are Dr. Shanti Parikh, who's
an associate professor of sociocultural anthropology
and of African and African American Studies
at Washington University in St. Louis.
Dr. Kalfani Ture is assistant professor of
criminology at Quinnipiac University in Connecticut
who has trained and served as a police officer.
Dr. Donna Auston is an anthropologist, writer,
an activist, whose body of work focuses primarily
on race, ethnicity, gender, religion, media,
and Islam in America.
And Dr. Avram Bornstein is professor of anthropology,
Interim Dean of Graduate Studies, and was
co-director of the New York Police Department's
leadership program at John J. College at City
University New York.
So, if I could start off by asking our panelists,
Dr. Parikh and Dr. Auston to talk more about
defunding and demilitarizing of police forces
in order to move funding to other services
such as social work, mental health, job placement
programs, and even shelters, our audience
in the last webinar noted that these entities
are in themselves complicit in the marginalization
of our Black communities.
Dr. Auston or Dr. Parikh, you wanna jump in
on this?
>> DR. AUSTON: I'll start. This is Donna Auston
speaking. I am a brown-skinned African-American
female. I am wearing a navy blue shirt and
a navy blue head wrap.
With regard to this question of defunding
and demilitarization and relatedly abolition,
many people who are behind, sort of, the push
right now, for, for steps like defunding,
you know... a lot of those -- a lot of those
folks pushing for that are people who see
abolition and you know, sort of dismantling
or at least, significantly scaling back the
infrastructure, the policing infrastructure
and defunding is one of the steps that, that
has been proposed as a way to get there.
And I think, you know, and one of the -- one
of the projects and one of the -- as I understand
it -- is that -- this process is to help us
begin to imagine different ways of creating
what we understand -- what -- you know, what
we conceptualize as public safety.
How do we ensure that, that citizens are safe,
right?
And so defunding and demilitarization and
sort of related proposals on the table right
now tackle that.
And one of the things I would say with regard
to how this connects to other institutions
-- I think this is a really important question
-- because one of the things that has to shift,
is not just the institution and the personnel,
within the police department, itself, but
really understanding that policing is one
institution that exists in a web or an ecosystem
of institutions.
It exists in connection with courts. It exists
in connection with schools.
It exists in connection with social services,
you know, particularly if they're, if they're
government attached, right?
Child services. All of these, all of these
function as policing apparatus.
Often.
Right?
>> DR. PEREZ: Mm-hmm.
>> DR. AUSTON: And how does that play out?
For example, you know, you know, mandatory
reporting, right?
While, of course, has good intentions, right?
The ways that Black people are often perceived
by police officers on the street to be inherently
criminal and their behaviors and their lives
to be read through the lens of criminality
-- this also often happens, for example, with
child protective service agencies across the
country.
So Black families, for example, are read,
often in a way with the same, you know, same
sort of criminal logic, right?
Which leads to devastating consequences.
Which leads to families being split up at
a higher rate.
In schools, this might show up as, you know,
discipline meated out to Black students, meated
ou at much higher rates.
It's currently the case that in every single
state, all 50 states, that Black girls are
suspended from school at higher rates than
white, young, you know, young girls, right?
In every state in America.
So I think we really have to think about the
ways that not just the institution of, you
know, the police itself, but the mindset of
policing that courses, and the culture of
policing, that courses through many of our
ancillary institutions functions and thinking
about how do we shift that, how do we shift
that paradigm into a more care-taking and
different types of problem-solving mode, right?
So that we can actually deal with people in
ways that aren't punitive as the first and
only recourse.
And disciplining as the first and only recourse.
And once we begin to think about this, as
not just about the police, but about the mindset
of policing, I think that we can begin to
avoid some of these problems that, that also
extend into other institutions.
>> DR. PEREZ: And if I can provoke a little
bit more on this, and Dr. Parikh, please feel
free to jump in.
I'm noticing that across the board I'm seeing
that schools remove policing from their campuses,
and they're putting in its place restorative
justice and other kinds of programs like that.
Is that a first step, and does that -- does
that really bring the sense of comfort and
safety to our youth that will allow them to
actually express what's going on in their
lives and why particular incidents are happening?
>> DR. AUSTON: Shanti?
>> DR. PARIKH: Oh, was that question for...?
I think some people would argue it is certainly
a first step to decriminalize schools in certain
locations, right?
So having the police presence there as opposed
to dealing with and handling children where
they are and at their immediate needs was
sending a signal to those communities. So
that's certainly a first step. The school
debate of course is a lot larger. It's about
the funding of the school system, at least
where I am. It's about how the -- it goes
along with the defund movement.
And to reiterate what Donna said, defund doesn't
mean to completely do away with a policing
system. It means to reimagine what it means
to both responding to what the community needs
are in terms of being able to achieve the
type of life they want. So Ramona, to get
to your question about schooling, one of the
debates here in St. Louis is how do you equally
fund schools when the taxpayer base around
the school is limited and the neighboring
area has so much more?
So it's also about reimagining what does it
mean to uplift an entire region.
So in that situation, the schooling would
be about distributing the resources.
Instead of having police to do the role that
a counselor might do or to do the role of
maybe enabling the parents to get jobs and
to be able to provide the same of the children
at home.
But I want to pick up what some of what Donna
had said about the fund for -- the Abolition
Fund. Being in St. Louis, one of the things
that we have found is that, after Ferguson
in 2014, you did have elected officials trying
to work within this broader criminal justice
system, as Donna was pointing to, and try
to do reforms from within.
What you're seeing around the country now
is people on the streets demanding reform,
but you're also seeing a backlash.
A very much of a hunkering down, tightening
of some of those structures.
So later in our discussion, I have some images
-- because I think sometimes images help to
animate the debate of what's going on, so
some of it is that people are particularly
interested in the idea that, and even the
New York Times and the Atlantic have run stories
on this, that this is not police broken; this
is how policing was set up.
So looking historically how certain bodies
in America, the Black body in particular,
was used as economic extraction.
And the criminal justice system is also a
form of extracting money from certain communities,
whether it's in fines or even the prison industrial
complex.
So people, many of the reforms -- people have
argued, have lead to pumping more money into
the system.
Whether it's accountability training, tracking
but instead of the money going out to the
community, I was looking at a graph, and over
time, the money for the police department
and the criminal justice system has actually
increased with all of the reforms. So what
people are saying, and I wanna quote from
what Angela Davis has said, and it's on one
of my slides, but I'll just read it. She said
that she was asked this recently, "The problem
is that reforms have often rendered the institution
itself more permanent and ultimately, more
repressive, more racist. For those of us who
have been engaging with this question for
a long time, we have come to the conclusion
that the system itself needs to be abolished.
We call ourselves, instead, reformists or
abolitionists.
So Angela and others are not arguing for doing
away with policing, but the idea, as Donna
said, is being, what does the community--
what can enable the community?
And the conversation here is a lot with economic
distribu- economic achievement, and the texture
of the conversation is being animated by increasing
resistance to doing this, and increasingly
seeing the Black Lives Matter movement, and
again, I'll show some of the slides, as the
enemy.
And it's becoming very polarized.
So as an anthropologist, I think now is the
moment for us to look ethnographically at
our particular sites and areas and see how
does the current form of policing reproduce
and sustain certain sets of geographic inequalities?
How does the policing as it's deployed now,
unevenly police in certain areas, or when
certain bodies move through certain areas?
So in the St. Louis region, Black bodies are
constantly having to go through "white or
affluent" communities and when their bodies
travel through that way, they're increasingly
policed, fined, sent into the work house,
things like that.
So I'll stop there.
But I think for us, as anthropologists, it's
about how do we understand how policing has
been used in our local areas to, to reinforce,
to reproduce certain hierarchy, certain inequalities
and how can we better imagine a system that
will improve the lives or allow people in
disenfranchised communities to live the sort
of life they're interested in living. And
it's about refunding into economic opportunities.
Mental health is what I hear more than social
services.
I think the mental health industry, people
say that it's the biggest, the biggest [indiscernible]
for mental health is now the prison system.
So it's about schools, it's about jobs, it's
about taking away the incentives to fine people
or to traffic people.
We have certain municipalities in St. Louis
where petty fines for jaywalking, which is
what Michael Brown was pulled over for in
2019. It's called manner of walking.
He was pulled over for a manner of walking,
and those sorts of policing of blackness,
those petty warrants, was a big part of local
municipalities economic base.
So how can we change that system when the
policing system is wrapped up with economic
incentives? And I'll stop there.
>> DR. PEREZ: Yeah, absolutely.
But can I ask just one question before we
move onto something else to both of you, and
Dr. Auston, and that is, when we -- and Dr.
Bornstein and Dr. Ture, please feel free to
jump in on this too.
But when we think about moving the funding
over, for instance, into social work or into
mental health or into any of these other things,
I think we're also assuming that those systems
are already set up to be progressive and to
actually respond to community needs, and I
don't find that to be true.
And so, for instance, at our university, one
of the things our faculty senate did was pass
a mandate that all criminal justice majors
now need to take these courses on racism in
policing, but I wonder too if there isn't
-- should we not also be talking about those
support systems and how to make sure those
support systems are getting a kind of education
that is reflective of particular communities'
needs?
Everything, you know, most education is [indescernible],
right? This is how we do it; here's your manual;
go to this chapter.
This is how you, this is how you would knock
on a door and let a parent know that you may,
you know, "I'm CPS, and I need to come in
and take your child."
But being able to make that culturally-appropriate,
based on a community, based on a community's
needs, based on a particular group's needs.
Do you imagine that this, too, needs to be
addressed and addressed right now?
>> DR. PARIKH: Oh, definitely.
>> DR. AUSTON: Yeah.
>> DR. PARIKH: Definitely. No, that's an excellent
point.
And those would not, those would, those simultaneously
-- right?
So this is large, I mean this, what we're
talking about is a larger, is a larger, a
longer term project.
But -- especially schools.
Schools are notorious for also replicating
racialized and gendered stereotypes and hierarchies
in the larger, in larger society. So I think
you're absolutely right. We don't need to
look at these other institutions as being
removed from the racist and anti-blackness
structure that surrounds them.
So it's a complete, yes, it's looking at all
of them.
>> DR. AUSTON: Yeah, and I mean, I would just,
I would agree with that.
And that was part of what I was talking about
when I was alluding to, you know, the ways
that one, these institutions are all linked
and that would also, in fact, include the
universities that are doing the educating.
Because, you know, within, you know, I mean,
if people are plugged into Twitter and have
paying attention the past few weeks, there
was a really interesting hashtag conversation,
#BlackInTheIvory, that really talked about
the ways that racism both, you know, on an
interpersonal and structural level, operates
on, you know, in universities and so, the
universities that are educating social workers,
police officers who are, in fact, you know,
you know, using, you know, accessing Higher
Education.
Some of them are; some are not.
Mental health professionals.
All of these people are being educated in
systems that are not necessarily doing the
most effective job at you know, getting -- at
working these issues into the curriculum and
education and their, you know, like, certification
priorities.
But, it's also, too, I think that's a part
of changing the mindset from part of what's
at stake, part of what's happening here is
that this idea that Black people need to be
policed is pervasive.
It's not just something that the police believe.
But it is something that a lot of us, we pick
this up from, you know, we pick this up everywhere.
We pick this up in the schools that we go
to.
I can tell you, like, as a young Black girl,
you know, who went to school, you know, my
elementary school was predominantly Black,
and one of the first things I learned was
that, you know, my language was lazy, deficient,
you know, you're speaking like, you know,
speaking of African-American vernacular English,
the very ways that we talk, as young children
were already being policed.
Already being disciplined as incorrect and
problematic and derelict.
And all this, you know, all of these negative
connotations.
So this starts very early and it's everywhere,
and so we really have to begin to think about
-- and this is part of what I understand,
one of the projects of abolition to be.
And it's not just about changing structures
outwardly, but actually, thinking about how
to change the way we think about you know,
the way we are oriented towards recognizing
these problems and solving them, right?
Because, again, if, if you are educated into,
you know, a mindset that, that understands
Black people as needing correction, you're
going to get this in all of the, you know,
you're going to get this wherever.
You're going to get it in a police department.
You're going to get it in the mental health
facilities; you're going to get this in the
schools. You're going to get like, you know,
so it's just going to reverberate out.
So what we really have to do is think about
how do we begin to change, how do we begin
to initiate a paradigm shift in the way we
actually understand relationality between
various communities.
>> DR. PARIKH: Yeah.
>> DR. PEREZ: Right.
>> DR. PARIKH: If I can just briefly add,
the difference between the police and some
of these other institutions, whether it's
social services or mental health, is the power
that our country has given the police since
the beginning of time.
As slave patrols, in the Emancipation, in
the local militia.
They have been given a lot more authority
and power to wield violence.
So if a teacher hits a student, there's a
good chance that teacher is going to be called
to the carpet.
If a police does, the police -- there are
ways a police can justify it.
There are built-in mechanisms to say they
were resisting arrest, I was afraid for my
life -- even if a teacher is afraid for the
life, it would be a harder thing.
So police have been empowered and militarized
with a lot of equipment.
So that's why, to me, the focus is on the
police.
It is such a brutal way of policing, of, it's
a such a brutal manifestation of the way the
system thinks about blackness.
>> DR. PEREZ: Absolutely.
>> DR. PARIKH: The idea of being able to empower
even the local militias.
So the Central Park bird, you know, the Cooper
-- Amy Cooper.
>> DR. AUSTON: Amy Cooper.
>> DR. PEREZ: Yeah.
>> DR. PARIKH: Or the Trayvon Martin and Zimmerman.
So the way that they also -- I think we talked
about before, sort of deputized people to
also, the population can police Black bodies.
And since the Black body is already seen in
the public, as we see on police union websites,
they are seen, they are positioned as the
oppositional character to the police.
And the police are trying to justify why they're
protecting -- it's to protect society, particularly
from Black men.
Black women's bodies are, of course, accessible
for all sorts of other types of violations.
But it is this very stark image.
So it's built into it.
But I would like to say that -- that's why,
yes, the other systems need to also be reformed
but, there's -- the police are such a dangerous
part of Black lives in America.
>> DR. PEREZ: Yes, you know, that's -- in
may ways, Dr. Bornstein, in your work, you
note that data collection and how data is
used to be, and how data is used actually
needs to be an area of scrutiny because these
data influence the career trajectories of
police officers.
Police officers need these kind of datasets
in order for their, in order for them to advance.
And on top of that, Dr. Ture, you've actually
written about toxic masculinity and the reverance
for violent action that manifests in what
you call blue fragility.
The two are so linked and are integral to
addressing the actual structure of policing,
which is what Dr. Auston and Dr. Parikh are
basically pointing at, that it's so pervasive.
I wondering if you could talk about these
two areas of your research.
>> DR. TURE: Dr. Bornstein.
>> DR. BORNSTEIN: Ok. So, thank you very much.
So, Avi Bornstein speaking. I'm a 51-year-old
white guy, bald white guy, sitting in my New
York apartment in a blue-collared shirt next
to a window.
And yeah, I guess, I think that I want to
add a -- a sort of an additional angle to
this also.
We've been talking about mindsets and of white
supremacy in different institutions.
And -- and, absolutely, questions about, you
know, cultural biases that are shared through
symbolic means and education, individual biases,
whether they're explicit, ideological, or
implicit bias, all of this is an important
part of the kinds of oppression that we're
talking about here.
But there's a -- It's even more insidious
and more powerful than that in a way.
And that leads us to the question you're asking
me about data and about the way management
happens, right?
The way people's careers in management happens,
because, a certain level -- it goes beyond
any kind of mindset, right?
That you can have officers, white, black,
Hispanic, whatever -- pardon me, Latinx -- that
have, might wear a Marcus Garvy pendant on
their shirt, but they're still subject to
the same kind of management system in an organization
that counts certain kinds of things, you know,
as countable, right?
So, certainly, in New York City, stop and
frisk became very famous in many departments.
It was just collars, arrests, or summonses,
you know, both for their, their, the generating
money as we've spoken about in terms of for
the city but also in terms of the career of
the individual officer who gets a point for
writing a summons, or gets a point for writing,
you know, a collar, or ten points -- I mean,
I'm making, it's not really points, but you
know, gets this kind of credit and that becomes
part of their personal evaluation.
Now when you put that kind of numeric system,
right?
And the kinds of data that come into the system
that have to do with, let's say, crime reports,
right?
And you have an already segregated geography
because of institutions like red lining, right,
and the banking systems behind that, that
have created, right?
Black ghettos in every city of America, in
the mid-20th century through design -- through
the FHA -- when you create that system and
then you have differential crime reports as
this numeric mechanism in order to drive the
call for more summonses and more arrests,
you can talk about that and you can organize
that without ever talking about race.
You can never mention questions about, about
blackness, whiteness or any of that.
All you need to say is hey, this neighborhood,
this pre-existing neighborhood that we didn't
create, we cops or whatever -- we're here,
we're just dealing with higher crime rates.
And they don't even need to be here in New
York.
We had horrible crime rates back in the 80s.
Now, I mean, you know, it's a whole different
city, but nonetheless, we have differentially
higher crime rates.
That becomes, you have to get those numbers
down and an individual cop has to get those
numbers up.
And that's institutional racism.
That's where policy-driven, whether it mentions
racism or not, is driving the system, and
individuals who might not even like it -- who
might be willing to take a knee at a demonstration,
right?
Are ideologically diverse group, right? Ethnically
and ideologically diverse, that they are going
along with it because this is the system.
And of course, we, in education, you know,
our own standardized testing, has a certain
element of that as well, and certainly we
mentioned educational funding before.
And educational funding is probably, we could
debate which is the worst, policing, whatever.
I would say that educational funding and institutionalized
racism that creates the loop that creates
property values that were the FHA red lining
I was talking about, right?
The undermining of black communities in that
way, that reproduce that through funding education
through property taxes, right?
There's no reason that has to be the case,
right?
>> DR. PEREZ: Right.
>> DR. BORNSTEIN: We don't have to fund education
that way, but we do, and it institutionalizes
racism withou ever talking about race, just
as property taxes.
>> DR. PEREZ: Absolutely. Yeah.
>> DR. PARIKH: Yeah, and that's exactly the
system I was referring to.
And we've normalized it, that the school funding
is tied to the property rates.
>> DR. BORNSTEIN: Right. And we've normalized
the idea that slightly higher crime rates,
right, of your seven index crimes, are going
to call for some kind of action to bring that
down.
And if I can just make that, close the loop
a little bit more to talk about socioeconomic
systems in that.
Getting the numbers down, even if the community
isn't, you know, let's say, here in New York,
in East New York and parts of Brooklyn, that
are distant from Manhattan's glamorous central,
not during COVID, but geting numbers down
there, even property crime numbers down there,
helps, you know, New York City sell its entertainment
industry and helps New York, you know, rent
the convention centers and bring people here
to Broadway and all that stuff.
>> DR. PEREZ: Yeah.
And there's -- in addition to gentrification
and the property real estate markets that
are driven by that. So all of this is definitely
this web of institutions, and so, we have
to -- I'm a little bit sensitive, working,
you know, it's a white supremacist system
all the way, but I'm a little bit sensitive
about scapegoating police officers, in a way,
if I can push back a little bit and say the
bankers have really done the biggest job to
these communities and cops are left, you know,
as the violent arm of society, trying to deal
with that kind of inequality, right?
And that kind of horrible thing with all the
other parallel institutions.
>> DR. PARIKH: No, and I think we would agree.
That it's the police who've been almost, the
system has been used so that they're the ones
who maintain something.
And they maintain it, yeah.
>> DR. TURE: And not to be redundant here,
but I actually, yeah, I think blue fragility
is important to be understood, but before
I talk about blue fragility, I think it's
important to sort of -- and it's necessary
to be redundant about laying out the context
of how blue fragility within law enforcement
culture works.
I do want to just sort of double back and
say in response to Dr. Bornstein, yeah, data
is important, in the Justice Act and the Justice
and Policing Act.
The proposition is -- part of the reform is
to collect data.
And they both also call for studies of police
and racialized violence.
The question is who is privileged in the data
collection, and what types of histomologies
are advanced in the data collection?
And I would argue, and maybe we could discuss
this a little bit later that tnthropologists
have to make a case for why our qualitative
paradigms, or mixed method approaches, or
particularly ethnographic approaches, are
important for the types of data that will
be collected and the types of sound conclusions
or understandings that we can arrive at by
this rich data.
I would, and it's no slight against those
of my colleagues that are quantoids, but to
say that you can manipulate statistical data,
just as much as the argument is that ethnographic
data is not objective enough.
But in terms of the context, let's be clear
that primary organizing principle of the socialization
process in the U.S., or in United States of
America, is race.
And race is, is important and understand what
this means.
It means that if you are white in a society,
that you are assigned a high degree of morality.
You're considered scrupulous.
Therefore, you are attributed a high degree
of credibility.
And you are considered, whether there is evidence
to belie the fact, you are considered a productive
citizen.
That is sort of the framework, that ready-made
framework, which shapes our perceptive schema,
right?
Which is part of the American socialization.
On the con -- conversely, if in fact you are
Black, you are considered unscrupulous, you
have a deficit of credibility, and you are
extended provisional citizenship.
Elijah Anderson, the ethnographer on the spatiality
of race, talks about provisionality, and he
says to be a provisional citizen, you always
have something to prove, you have to prove
your right to belong and your right to access
to whatever the goods are.
Now police are slightly different.
Police are bestowed the greatest amount of
moral authority, legitimacy and the license,
as Shanti Parikh stated, and Donna also stated,
the license to use coercive means to achieve
a social order that both maintains and reproduces
the benefits that they received, but also
the benefits of the larger society.
So I don't get into the debate anymore about
bad apples making the barrel spoil.
I think this is a discussion about the actual
orchard.
That we need to look at, we need to look at
the way in which law enforcement functions
as a structurally-racist institution to maintain
both social inequality and white supremacy
which presupposes that there's also gender
inequality and these other sort of hierarchies
within social divisions.
Now, in terms of blue fragility, I just want
to note here that we've been thinking about
reform and we've been engaged in all types
of reform, you know, for a long time.
I mean, we talk about studies of this issue,
Otto Kerner in the Kerner Commission in 1968,
and out of that commission was more money
for police officers.
Out of Bill Clinton's study with the crime
bill was to hire 100,000 more police officers.
So there is a problem with reform that often
leads to the increase or sort of, the increasing
of the coercive state apparatus of policing.
But blue fragility -- I sort of define as
sort of this strategic deploying of defensive
and protective strategies that both shield
law enforcement agencies from legitimate criticism
-- it shuts down, sort of -- civil discourse
around issues of use of force, and it just
totally stops or halts, you know, the types
of reforms that we're going, you know, asking
for.
And it's done to maintain the legitimacy of
police officers and their authority. It's
done to sort of maintain this fictional idea
that law enforcement are exclusively fit to
bring about public safety.
And it's done in a way that limits our critique
of their use of force.
Now, we've witnessed a lot of blue fragility,
in fact, over the last few days, or few weeks,
if you will, 57 police officers in Buffalo
who decided to resign when two of their emergency
response team members pushed a 75-year-old
gentleman, causing him to suffer, hit his
head and suffer brain injuries, instead of
questioning whether or not activation of this
militarized unit was fit and suitable for
a peaceful Black Lives Matter protest.
That, you know, that question or that consideration
wasn't even sort of dealt with adequately
because these officers are deploying this
fragility, this sort of blue fragility, to
stop that discussion.
And there's multiple other examples, perhaps
in this conversation that I can tell you,
but there's one thing I want to say about
blue fragility.
It is not weakness. It is not weakness.
In fact, it is a maneuver of strength. It
is a strategic and strengthful maneuver to
parry critics and to shield our understanding
of the way in which police operate, historically
and contemporarily, around structures of racism
and inequality. So we don't even look at police,
policing, and race, so that becomes a problem.
And so thinking about all of this, in closing,
at least for this part of the conversation,
you know, as a Black man, I want to be personal
about this, because I am a Black male, and
the goodies are in white space.
The goodies are predominantly white institutions,
whether it be Higher Ed or just in white space.
And so part of my strategy of survival is
to access those goodies.
And when I attempt to access those goodies,
I am crossing into white space where I am
perceived as an immediate and urgent threat.
So now I have to unnecessarily think about
how do I sort of navigate law enforcement,
even as a former police officer.
How do I navigate that?
And police officers are almost always activated
to protect that white space and to push me
back into my social status.
>> DR. PEREZ: That's a -- there are so many
things you threw in on this that my mind is
still unpacking a lot of it.
But I know one of the things folks have really
asked about is how these police unions have
participated in protecting police and reinforcing,
in the case that you talked about, Dr. Bornstein,
the data.
You know, creating ways that they can, they
can prevent police from being held accountable
for certain kinds of things.
>> DR. BORNSTEIN: Let me address that, but
let me back up a little bit and address Kalfani's
last point there.
This is Avi speaking.
That, about space.
And I think that the question's about geography
here and are we thinking about the -- our
geography is I think, probably, one of the
biggest organizing issues that we have here.
That it is exactly that creation of a white
space or the segregated space that has allowed
all kinds of institutions to, to be so discriminatory
and oppressive, right?
So the two that we've been hitting on so far
here, you know, about schools and about, about
policing, clearly -- I mean... you -- it -- we
know about this difference in funding of schools,
but just the way they operate and everything.
And the mentality of police officers in one
precinct or another, certainly in one community
or another, an all-white community -- you
know, the kind of way you agree -- the way
you're given advice to put -- I mean -- it's
kind of -- it's kind of night and day, right?
In terms of the way geography allows for these
things to happen, but of course, we know in
terms of healthcare, and the food deserts
issues, there are all of these things that,
hitting geography, and questions about how
housing is, you know -- where we live, right?
That that is kind of a linchpin in some ways
of the effect of kinds of oppression and segregation
that exist in other institutions, right? Not
completely, not everything is like that, but
certainly --
>> DR. PEREZ: Yeah, yeah, you're absolutely
right. And Dr. Parikh actually talked about
that a little bit in our first webinar -- the
whole notion of geography.
And I know here in California, there was a
point where we tried to move funding from
taxation out so that it didn't just sit in
these white suburban communities, that those
-- that funding would be dispersed equitably
across the state.
And it failed.
But this is one of the conversations that
is definitely situated within privilege, white
privilege and within race.
And we need to have conversations directed
at things like that.
Just like we do about social work and housing
and, you know, all these other things.
It is so pervasive.
Racism is so pervasive, what that, that we
really have to pick apart the various institutions
that it's impacting.
>> DR. TURE: So if I could just add.
Because I do want to get to your question
about police unions.
I think in a society where -- there's a sort
of inter-linking of all institutions, and
white supremacy, in some ways, has this sort
of [indiscernible] seal over our sort of social
existence. And so all institutions are implicated,
whether it be education, economics, entertainment,
law, labor, politics, war, religion, nutrition,
etc. All of these important areas about sort
of human dimension is sort of implicated with
white supremacy, and so another way to think
about it is what dominant society considers
a benign institution, we readily realize it
to be a coercive institution.
And so it's not just sort of the police and
someone said earlier, we have to be careful
about looking at corresponders, social workers,
or you know, other types of corresponders.
There's a history in social work.
Where they have been just as coercive and
their practices have led to the sustaining
of unequal societies.
But in terms of police unions, in thinking
about how they allow police officers to corrupt
data or deny access to good data.
You know, unions get their start by the second
decade of the 20th century in Boston, by 1968.
They have their major victory in New York
City, and they're sort of full blown.
We have been, by and large antiunion, but
we're never antipolice union.
But one of the -- police unions engage in
multiple practices. So when I was in law enforcement,
we learned the sort of three-prong approach.
When a police officer was involved in a critical
incident, 1) you have to paint the victim,
or the suspect, you have to paint the victim
as a suspect.
Unarmed or not, there has to be something
about their character that necessitated violence
or use of deadly force.
Second thing is if that doesn't work, you
have to, in fact, talk about how tough it
is, just sort of the precarity of being a
police officer, right?
You have to impress upon the citizenry that
this is a tough job.
And if that doesn't work as this sort of mitigating
strategy, then you just sort of wait it out.
Because the argument in police culture, and
as part of blue fragility, is that we have
short attention spans.
And so we'll just let it go by.
Now, there's other more sort of concrete and
direct examples.
Police unions advocate for the expungement
of both claims of abusive practices, as well
as substantiated practices that police misconduct
to sort of fall off a police record.
You are more-likely to get an expungement
for engaging in police misconduct than you
are if you were wrongfully convicted. I mean
let that sink in for a minute.
You can get an expungement quicker for doing
bad things as a law enforcement officer than
you can if you were wrongfully convicted.
And there are multiple other things that police
unions do, but one of the things that I would
say is that police unions have been a major
hindrance to even getting rid of qualified
immunity.
Which shields officers from civil liability
when the criminal sort of remedies fail to
work in the interest of people who are adversely
impacted by the type of policing we've seen.
So those are a few examples.
>> DR. AUSTON: And I would just put on top
of that, in addition to things like qualified
immunity, and I -- it really pains me to do
this because I'm very much a union person,
I believe in unions, really.
But, yeah. Police unions, I think, are a different
sort of animal, and you know, appeals process,
when a police officer is actually fired, that,
you know, unions are able, in many cases,
to get officers reinstated.
And I would also say too, if they're not reinstated
with their original department, where the
violations took place, a lot of times, what
ends up happening is that police are -- they're
just picked up by other departments.
And so they're, so even if that functions,
where the union is not directly involved in
that process, and many times they are assisting
an officer to be placed somewhere else, you
know, police departments and law enforcement
agencies, as a whole, function, you know,
to sort of keep these officers working.
Even when they are known to have extremely
problematic records.
So I don't know, it's like, you know, you
know there's an abusive employee in another
field and we just -- and it happens in other
fields as well.
Including Higher Education, a lot of people
who have -- anyway, that's a separate discussion.
But it is sort of, you know, there are ways
the institution protects its employees from
the consequences and this, again, this extends
into the courts.
Because then, we talked I think, last time,
I think it was Shanti who was mentioning the
ways that, you know, police departments and
prosecutors offices have, I mean, they have
this relationship.
I mean, the prosecutors rely on the police
to do the investigating, and so there's this
really -- I can't, if it was someone else,
I'm sorry, I can't remember -- but we did,
I remember it coming up.
Where, you know, it's very difficult because
of the incestuous nature of the relationship
between police departments and prosecutors
offices, often for, for them to do their job
-- for the prosecutors to step in and do their
job when a clear crime has been committed,
when someone has been murdered, when -- et
cetera, et cetera.
There are so many ways that police unions
and of course, the other ancillary institutions
function to really make it so that there is
close to zero accountability for police officers
who commit the most-egregious acts of violence
and abuse against the public.
>> DR. PARIKH: Can I add too -- Avi, did you
have something on unions? I have two case
studies, and I'll make them really quick.
People can Google them.
I know we're running out of time.
But in terms of the union, so after the Mike
Brown thing, which was a pivotal moment for
the St. Louis region.
After that, we're divided into the city and
this thing called the county.
So St. Louis region is huge.
It's 100 municipalities.
The Wesley Bell in 2018, won the election
of the county -- St. Louis county prosecutor.
Bob McCullough is the one who decided not
to, you know, press charges against Daron
Wilson who murdered Mike Brown, so he won.
McCullough had been in there 27 years.
Wesley Brown is an attorney, had a history
of, you know, he certainly knows the prosecutorial
world, so that wasn't an issue.
Before he even took office, the police union
and the prosecutors met secretly, even before
he took office and decided to join a union
with the police officers.
That's how threatening the mention of internal
accountability and reform were.
This wasn't even a discussion about defund,
unfund, redistribute -- this was all about
the police and the prosecutors have a bad
reputation -- we know we're good people, we're
going to clean it up.
It was so threatening that they -- this is
the first time in history -- here, at least,
maybe it's done other places, that the prosecutors
joined in the police union.
Second case, city of St. Louis, again, two
different places.
City of St. Louis, 2017, Kim Gardner was elected
as the top prosecutor of our city.
She ran on a platform, and she said we're
going to hold, to Donna's point and to Kalfani's
point, we're going to hold police accountable.
If you as a police officer have, in the past,
lied, misrepresented, easy things, corrupt,
abused, if you had bad misconduct, when it
comes to dealing with a citizen arrest, we're
not going to, until we do an investigation
-- take any cases from you, or recognizing
a warrant -- a "do not call" list, what is
it, you know there are a bunch of other names
for it.
So now she is the number one target on the
police union web- on their Facebook page.
So the pinned post -- and I was actually going
to show this -- um, the pinned post, I'll
just read it.
The police officer union and again, there
not, that's not the employment thing -- that's
a union.
It says "Will you or your loved one be the
next victim of Kim Gardner's George Soros's
backed criminal empowerment agenda?" So probably
about every month, every other month, the
police union is targeting her.
So much that, other African-Amer-, other Black
prosecutors from around the country had to
come and defend her.
She had to file something about racism against
them. So any time reform is done from within,
the police union harrasses the person.
They also harrassed the Black police officers
who were in solidarity during the mourning
of Mike Brown. There were police officers
that went out to sort of show solidarity with
the community saying "We feel your pain."
The more -- sometimes protests are about pain.
They were blackballed on the police union
page, saying, "Would you", you know, as a
police officer, "Would you want to work under
this person?" And so you know, in terms of
that -- and then the incentives.
I'll just stop there -- I think lots of [indiscernible]
yeah.
>> DR. TURE: So I have, in fact, I always
found -- thinking about this idea of provisionality
and thinking about how my own experience,
as I've said, I've been through three agencies,
went to the police academy three times. And
coming in law enforcement as already a provisionary
citizen, I'm very sensitive to that which
increases my provisionality. And entering
in law enforcement, I immediately became -- suspiciously
was accused of being too black for the blue
uniform.
In other words, that I was an affirmative
action hire, or I just, you know, just maybe
wasn't fit for law enforcement, because of
the lack of morality, lack of ethics, all
this stuff. I mean, these were the assumptions
that were made about me, and I suppose they're
made about a lot of Black and Latinx people
in law enforcement.
The other part of it was that I became too
blue for the Black community.
So I sat in this right, interstitial space
with the ability to sort of keenly analyze
what was happening between the two -- between
my community and law enforcement.
What I would say about police unions and just
about the culture in general, as a Black officer,
you have to give the appropriate nods or at
least the overtures to the dominant force
-- which is by and large, white.
Officers make -- we are one in four of, African-American
officers are one in four -- or people of color
as police officers are one in four in the
country in law enforcement.
And it differs, depending on where you are
geographically.
Some police departments are 70- 80% white.
You have to give overtures to say that you
are part of the blue team.
Again, you're still provisional, so you've
got to prove it, over and over again, you're
always being tested.
But at the point at which you disagree in
a very sort of explicit and public way, then
you are facing all kinds of hazing. You are
ostracized. You are -- disincentives come
into play, where you are assigned the worst
shifts, the worst locations to patrol. I mean
all kinds of things happen to you once you
push back.
So I think, as anthropology as a discipline,
think about how we might intervene. I think
it's really interesting to look at how police
unions and police culture discipline Black
and Latinx officers, or women, or queer officers,
or Indigenous officers, to tote the party
line and stick to the cultural scheme.
>> DR. PARIKH: Yeah, yeah. I think what's
interesting -- this is Shanti. Kalfani, I
think what's interesting is -- I'd be -- I
haven't -- the, so there's Black police unions.
The Ethical Society of Police is what it's
called here, and then there's the National
Black Police Union.
Of course, this is just looking at three or
four case studies, but a lot of times they're
led by Black female police officers.
And this is why I like your idea of the fragile,
you know, the blue fragility. There's something
about masculinity in the police thing.
So the Black female police officers were already
getting targeted and they were -- it was sort
of already a done deal that they were going
to be targeted as Black women.
But, so just a gender note that there's something
-- there's a very different relationship,
depending on gender as well.
And you're absolutely right, in terms of the
hazing that sort of goes on, and the discipline,
and the public shaming that goes on, on some
of the media sites.
>> DR. BORNSTEIN: I would just add that, even
some of the organizations you're referring
to, like NOBLEE, National Organization of
Black Law Enforcement Executives, and in New
York City, in fact, like the Guardians, which
is the local Black organizations, Black police
officers. Although, there are many, actually,
different kinds of fraternal organizations.
Those -- They came in to being, really, because
of exactly the problem that Kalfani was just
talking about.
That -- and the pushback, and that the union
had been captured, right? And obviously, I
too, I spent a decade as the grievance officer
for our union, our faculty union.
But sometimes unions get captured by other
kinds of forces, right? Certainly in the McCarthy
era, they were, and they were completely corrupt.
And here, they have often been captured and
organizations like the Guardians had to organize
because there was no other voice to protect
them, right, from the dominant -- the kind
of disciplining that you guys are referencing.
>> DR. AUSTON: Yeah, I mean, yeah, one of
my beloved uncles who passed away a couple
years ago actually was one of the founders
of The Guardians in the city where I grew
up, and you know, we've talked a lot about,
you know, sort of his experience.
I mean he was hired as a police officer in
the late 50s and, you know, was a part of
a group of officers, both in Pittsburgh and
other parts of the country.
They sued the Pittsburgh police department.
They sued other departments across the country.
Interestingly, he was also part of a group
of folks who sued one of the local schools
of social work, to sort of tie it back to
the question that we opened with and the ways
of these institutions often work together
in similar ways to discipline and police Black
people to the detriment of folks in those
communities.
And yeah, and I, just to pick up, also, I
think it's important to, to highlight and
to amplify a little bit Shanti's introduction
of the question of gender here.
Because, I mean, imagine that female police
officers, or female-presenting police officers
are experiencing these types of -- this type
of harassment or, you know, like, discomfort
within -- within the context of the -- the
social context with their coworkers, right?
This is also definitely playing out on the
street.
Women are, excuse me, women are subject to
particular types of police abuse.
And I think that's a really important element
to bring into this conversation.
You know, a lot of times the, the common narrative
or the mainstream narrative about racialized
police violence is that it's a problem that
afflicts Black males, right?
We often don't think about or talk about or
examine the ways that Black women experience
the shootings, the beatings, the same things
that Black men typically experience in terms
of their interactions with the police, but
also, specific types of police abuse, including
sexual abuse and rape that happened very frequently.
The high rates of domestic violence and intimate
partner violence among police personnel within
their families.
I mean there's all sorts of really interesting
and disturbing -- interesting in a disturbing
sort of way, gender dynamics that need to
be examined in this question.
And so the consideration of toxic masculinity
that we, that was mentioned earlier in the
conversation and how that shapes police culture,
I think really thinking about that helps us
not just to get at sort of understanding police
reaction, but actually understanding the specific
ways that police violence as a spectrum happens
in different contexts and different settings
and to different sets of people.
Or sub-sets of people, right?
Because of course, the, the question of, you
know, racialized police violence or that notion
as a concept, actually is -- needs to be broken
down further, right?
Because Black women, Black trans people, experience
really high rates of state violence.
And often very absent from the conversation.
They're not even -- we're not even on the
screen.
And for, for more than -- I mean, if people
want to follow this question up -- Kimberlé
Crenshaw, who of course is the scholar who
is, most known, most especially known for
the appointing of the term intersectionality
as a way of getting at the simultaneous experience
of oppression -- for example, race and gender
-- her African American Policy Forum, a think
tank research institute that is based in New
York City, back in 2015 introduced the Say
Your Name hashtag and campaign, specifically
like, at the height of the last flare ups
around police violence around 5 years ago.
To really introduce and to bring the question
of gendered violence, gendered police abuse
into the national conversation.
So I just wanted to highlight that here as
we're talking about how this plays out, gender
is really an important -- an important analytic
for us to consider.
>> DR. BORNSTEIN: I'd like to jump on that
and push it a little further, also in thinking
about police, police behavior and notions
of -- and intersectionality, not just around
race, but around class and ideas about manhood.
Because there's been some interesting work
by people -- studying community policing,
really.
And seeing how there is certain rejection
of community policing by police officers was
motivated, theorized in a sense -- was motivated
as being -- because it's too feminine. That,
that notions of masculinity that were -- that
sort of depend on violence, right?
And physical prowess, right?
As being sort of the dominant, a dominant
motif in policing because, because of where
it sort of sits in the American class, cultural
milieu, right?
That a different -- that a professional, you
know manhood, let's say, is, is less tied
to physical prowess, more tied to say, financial
prowess, perhaps and, and so that, this, this
understanding of manhood as being, and gender,
as being one of the things that has actually
undermined all kinds of efforts in policing
to move it away from this militarized kind
of functioning that we've had, and that, that,
you know, this is, this is this complex -- way
beyond the institution, but related to all
class and perceptions of manhood that needs
to be addressed before we can actually have
any kind of demilitarizing of the process
in a policy or procedural way.
>> DR. PARIKH: Yeah. Right. One thing I'd
like to add about the gender piece is the
figure of the white woman in the ability to
justify what exactly the police are protecting,
and the image --
Of course, the Emmett Till historical case
is the one that best animates all of this,
but it is about protecting white man's property.
And historically, that was not only his plantation,
but his woman.
And again, on my slides, that I don't, that
we don't have time for me to show them, but
that was one of the key images on the police
website.
It was a picture of a police officer who had
these wings, and a little white girl with
a teddy bear, and the caption read "The difference
between us and them." And it was very much
trafficking in race, gender, innocence, and
then next to it was an image of Alton Sterling,
and he's holding guns and he has his kids.
So it was this -- and it says us and them.
And it was about protecting, you know, a particular
type of whiteness.
The second thing I want to go back to is something
Avi said awhile ago about police becoming
the scapegoat for a lot of the critiques,
and I agree.
In some ways I want to flip it and say they've
been the scapegoat of the state.
The state has been very instrumental in deploying,
I bet -- I'm sure the average income of a
police officer, on the streets is probably
not that high.
I would imagine -- but they are there too
-- in some ways, they're also a scapegoat
for the state to act as a buffer between the
elite -- whether it's bankers who are shaping
geographic spaces a certain way or schools
or protecting businesses. They are also used
as a way to protect the elite.
So not only is it becoming a scapegoat within
the discussion but they are -- they have been
used as -- by the state to serve in this function.
>> DR. TURE: Absolutely.
>> DR. PEREZ: And we've seen that --
[talking simultaneously]
>> DR. AUSTON: I would agree with that --
>> DR. PARIKH: And of course they take it
further than that.
I mean I'm not, that's not to excuse people
who have been trafficking it and you know.
>> DR. AUSTON: I would agree with that analysis.
I think police are definitely a mechanism
of protection of state -- protection of the
state, itself right?
They are the means by which a lot of these
boundaries are enforced.
I would -- I do, though, bristle at the term
scapegoat.
Because I don't know -- in my mind -- this
is maybe just me -- and I do, but I think
that language is important because you know
scapegoating, in my mind, is -- you know,
has connotations --
>> DR. PARIKH: They're not innocent --
>> DR. AUSTON: They're not innocent at all.
They're willing participants, you know. They
execute this function willingly and defend,
violently, their right to do so, which means
that yes, there, is a class element.
Yes, there is sort of a -- you know, there
is -- and I think that's an important distinction
to highlight in the ways that there is -- there
are degrees of -- like the state is not, again,
it's not an undifferentiated mass.
There are degrees and levels of who is, you
know, like -- levels of power, that sort of
thing.
Elite versus sort of mid-level.
All of that is important to tease out.
But the police are not innocent.
>> DR. BORNSTEIN: Yeah.
>> DR. AUSTON: You know, and I don't think
people are arguing that, per se, but I think
the language -- the chosen language, here,
I think, you know, it makes me bristle an
a little bit.
Because we need to sort of identify that,
you know, there's some problems here, and
people are willingly engaging in this sort
of violent enforcement.
>> DR. PARIKH: Yeah, and I would -- ironically,
more like, you're also an agent of --
>> DR. AUSTON: Yeah, yeah. I just wanted to
clarify.
>> DR. PARIKH: Avi, go.
>> DR. BORNSTEIN: Well no, I think you're
absolutely right, that that is a difference
between the innocent scapegoat and the scapegoat
who is a participant for their own career
goals.
But the part that I would want to maintain,
I guess, of that word, is the fact that, you
know, in a classic Biblical scapegoat story,
right?
It's about putting the sins of the community
on this goat and then, you know, killing the
goat.
So it, that doesn't speak to the innocence
or guilt of the goat, but it's the fact that
the sins of this problem are widespread, right?
>> DR. AUSTON: Yeah. I agree.
>> DR. BORNSTEIN: And that all of these like,
really righteous corporations right now, are
you know pointing their fingers at police
officers, you know, and that's the part of
it that seems like, oh, you know, "We look
-- we're all -- it's their fault that we have
all these problems, and it's not the fault
of the rest -- of the society."
>> DR. TURE: I would just clarify that, first
of all, police officers are recruited from
an inherently unequal society, and many cases,
their social status benefits from the way
in which that society is structured.
So they come into the profession with the
placid understanding of what they are tasked
to do and what their functional role is in
terms of the larger society.
But you know, one of the things we talk about
in the professionalization.
We say that violence is inevitable, right?
Like, because if you can appreciate the fact
that you are in a sort of racially unequal
society and perhaps -- and by the way, this,
this, this difference between white society
and Black society is not just like a sort
of natural in -- like a food desert -- it
just doesn't grow out of that thing, but is
intentionally designed.
In other words, that advantage or white privilege
happens through accumulation of disadvantage
of Black folk -- of people at the bottom of
society.
So police, understand, fundamentally, that,
you know, that people are going to push back
at those -- they're going to push back at
this inequity.
They're going to go for the goodies on the
other side of the track.
And so I think law enforcement, we know and
expect, and we tolerate violence against LGBTQI
and A.
We tolerate violence against women. We tolerate
violence against Indigenous people. We tolerate
violence against Black and Latinx people,
because that is understood as fundamentally
part of what happens, right?
So whether it is sort of the sins being sort
of -- voice of the pawn, police, I'm not sure
I would buy that any more than I would buy
sort of this idea that they're being scapegoat.
I'm not sure about that.
>> DR. PARIKH: But -- this is Shanti. One
thing. I think the reason police are important
is because, revolutions happen on the street.
And if you look at, again, I'm going to Ferguson,
to that period, but even now... if one is
going to have a change in the system, whether,
to protest -- to demonstrate -- whether it's
protesting in the administrative hall of a
university or whether it's protesting at the
counter, during the Civil Rights Movement,
our ability to protest and say descent is
a big part of the history of the world and
police are called upon to stop descension.
And if you look at the Ferguson thing, even
going on now, the kettling, the tear gassing,
the very visual, "We are here to protect the--"
-- and I agree with you, Donna, the state
is not this one thing -- but let's deploy
it now, I'm using it now as a social order.
So in some ways, the police become important
because they become the local military in
those instances and they become the way to
squelch descension.
>> DR. PEREZ: Yes.
>> DR. PARIKH: And historically, that's what
we've seen.
So leave alone the daily policing and the
fines, and in some places, in St. Louis, it's
up to 25% of the municipal -- 20% of the municipality
revenue is off taxing Black people for petty
cr-, you know, for jaywalking and things like
that.
Leave that alone. They also can prevent certain
sorts of descension.
And again, we have visual reminders of Trump
trying to bring in the military and then finally
people were like, "Ok, the military is supposed
to be used somewhere else, not on our people.
But police are ok." So I think that's another
reason that there's something very symbolic
about their, the power that they're bestowed
upon to maintain the peace.
That's the peace that we're trying, that I
think people who are for the abolition movement
are trying to say, "We want a different type
of peace." We want a piece of this peace.
>> DR. PEREZ: Yes. Absolutely.
I am going to ask if there's any final comments
on this.
And then, we've got some amazing questions
from the audience.
>> DR. PARIKH: I think Avi has one.
>> DR. PEREZ: We want to open up and have
you guys begin to -- have you all begin to
engage with them.
So is there any final --
>> DR. BORNSTEIN: I'll make it quick. I'll
make it quick.
We've been sort of like uncomfortable with
the way we've been talking about state, and
I think you're right: that we should be a
little bit uncomfortable with that because
the state -- because there's -- my feeling
is that really what we need to be doing is
seizing the state a little bit more and instead
of relinquishing it to sort of the dominant
white supremacist, capitalist, misogynist
glasses, right? That's, that's the thing.
We want -- We want police officers to be on
the side of -- we want the state to be on
the sides of the community. The community
to control the state.
If we relinguish the state, then it's just
rich folks who can do whatever they want,
and there's no organization for poor folks,
really, or everybody else, right?
And that the state is the vehicle, the democratic
vehicle, when it's working, to maintain the
-- to bar the control or the willful, arbitrary,
capricious power of powerful people, right?
Of capital, let's say.
>> DR. PEREZ: Absolutely.
>> DR. BORNSTEIN: So really -- we want to
-- I see police, I see the state, I see education,
health care, all those elements of the state,
as something that the struggle, and I try
to argue this with police officers too.
That you have a choice -- are you going to
work for the man, right?
And oppressive communities, or are you the
police officers trying to protect anybody,
no matter who they are or what they are?
Are you that model of police officer?
Are you working for the "people", the community,
whatever it is?
And that -- that's the -- that's the ideological
attention.
>> DR. PEREZ: So if it's ok, I want to bring
Daniel Ginsberg forward -- this is Ramona
-- bring Daniel Ginsberg forward so that he
can begin to present some questions to our
panelists.
>> DANIEL: Hi, thank you.
My name is Daniel Ginsberg.
I'm Director of Education and Professional
Practice at the AA.
I'm a male-presenting white person with unruly
dark, pandemic hair and a striped blue shirt.
And I use he/him or they/them pronouns. I
wanted to thank all the panelists for this
outline of some really exciting critical scholarship
about policing.
I'm really feeling it for myself, living in
ancestral Piscataway land, now known as Washington,
D.C., that has recently been policed by the
Utah National Guard.
But what I wanted to transition us to now
having talked a lot about the "what" of the
scholarship.
There's some really interesting questions
in the Q&A from this, and also from the previous
session, transitioning from the "what" to
the "how". How can we, as anthropologists,
best-contribute to anthropological research
on policing?
Thinking of it in terms of methods and really
thinking of it in terms of ethics, because
there are a lot of potential risks of it.
There's a couple things that people have mentioned
that I would like to name to contribute to
the discussion going forward.
When we talk about police unions, how do we
talk about the problems of police unions without
contributing to a more general antiunion rhetoric?
Which is something the panel has already touched
on today.
Also, if we think about our ethical commitments
that we make to our research participants,
when our research participants are police
officers, how can we, then, do scholarship,
that's designed to contribute to abolition?
And if we are advancing demands for abolition,
how do we think about the way that that could
potentially, on the one hand, lead to more
overpolicing of communities where activists
are, or on the other hand, if abolition takes
place, lead to essentially a neoliberal privatization
of the police function.
So all of these things are risks in even having
this conversation, and the question that I
wanted to pose to you on behalf of the audience
is what's the right way for us going forward
to think about all of that as we do our work?
>> DR. AUSTON: I would say, just to -- you
said a lot there.
And so, I guess I'll just try to -- I didn't
-- my own research -- this is Donna speaking,
I'm sorry -- my own research, I did not work
with the police.
It just was something -- one, it wasn't the
thing that was most interesting to me.
But two, I just -- my personal politics, don't
allow me to do that.
And also, there were safety concerns.
I'm a Black woman -- I'm a black Muslim woman,
by the way, and I just don't -- I don't feel
safe doing research with the police, for a
whole bunch of reasons, and -- but I think,
there are definitely cautionary -- I mean,
examples of anthropologists working with the
military, during the Vietnam War and then
later sorts of engagements that I think give
us pause or, you know, material to consider
when we're thinking about how you might go
about researching, partnering with, whatever
you want to call it, in a way that doesn't
expose any of your research participants to
harm.
I don't see that there's an inherent contradiction,
personally, between working with police and
asking for abolition.
I think -- for me, I think some of the principles
you might engage in and that I try to live
by as a researcher, regardless of who I'm
working with, is that I'm clear and transparent
with my research participants about who I
am and, you know, letting them know the things
about me that they need to know in order to
feel comfortable talking to me or letting
me follow them around or whatever it is that
I'm going to do with them.
I think transparency -- and then people decide
if they want to engage with you or not.
I mean, that's -- I think that's, as an anthropologist
-- I think that ought to be our stance regardless
of who the people are that we're trying to
work with.
We, we want to examine their lives. We want
to be admitted into their private world and
their work world and all of the -- you know,
and they don't have to grant us admission
there.
>> DR. PEREZ: Right.
>> DR. AUSTON: So if we are, if we understand
that and, you know, I was always very -- not
just saying, "Hey, I'm affiliated here and
this, that, and the third." But personally,
I maintain a fairly public presence.
I have a website, I have a Twitter account,
I have a -- you know, and I will direct people
there.
You want to know who I am?
You want to know sort of the types of views
that I might have, whatever, then you can
decide if I'm somebody that you actually want
to engage with or grant access to.
So I think that regardless of what your target
population is in terms of research -- ethically
-- you need to make yourself legible, what
your purposes are and that doesn't -- that
also doesn't mean that you're necessarily
going to produce research that they agree
with, right?
That's not necessarily the end game.
And I make that clear as well.
I might -- you might tell me something or
you let me see something, and I may take this
analysis in a direction that you don't ultimately
care for in the end.
If you are still comfortable working with
me, regardless, right?
Then we can proceed.
If not, that's fine and I'll find someone
else.
So I think, part of it is really making your
-- if you're working as sort of a traditional
ethnographer, right? And that's what sort
of setting as an anthropologist, then I think
making yourself transparent is a big part
of that.
I think one of the other things too is that
it's important to remember, we talked about
this a little bit the last time -- but also,
sort of remembering that anthropologists work
with people in a lot of different ways, right?
It's not just traditional fieldwork, right?
Anthropologists work in a variety of settings.
And so really, just allowing, you know, basic
questions of how to, again, be transparent,
but also to sort of -- you know, not expose
people to risk that, you know, they wouldn't
necessarily consent to and, you know, just
being clear about what it is and what the
purposes are of whatever engagement you're,
you know, you're sort of dealing with folks
in.
And give people the opportunity to be, you
know, to be in company with you or not.
>> DR. PEREZ: This is Ramona. Thank you, Donna.
>> DR. TURE: So I'll just jump in really quick,
and say, in terms of Donna's comment -- by
the way, I apologize, this is Kalfani Ture.
I'm an African-American male, dark skin, wearing
a gray shirt and sitting in my living room.
But in terms of Donna's point, we need to
understand how people experience state violence,
so we need people who study those who interact
with police from the other side.
So I think that that scholarship is really
important.
I would simply -- I want to offer a couple
things here.
One, you know, I want everybody who is listening
-- we need to write the discipline with AAAs
and say, "Hey, we need to put together a kind
of project that's akin to you know, Race:
The Power of an Illusion or the Race Project
that was organized -- I think Audrey Smedley
was part of it, but in house, we need to put
together something substantial. And we can
call it, Police and the Power, I mean -- we
can call it, Police: The Power of White Supremacy.
And then we can go at it, right?
But we need something substantial, because
even those who are the in the discipline,
we need to understand that while we may not
be, or we are self-declared anti- -- or we
are self-declared non-racists, et cetera.
But how does our passivity may even contribute
to this larger structure of inquality?
And with that being said, we need to think
about how do we compensate Black scholars
who are going to be tasked with getting this
ball rolling?
All right. Now, in terms of the second project
that I propose for the discipline, as a police
officer, I can tell you, you know, police
officers make really great ethnographers.
Because by the nature of what we do, we have
to be observant. In some ways, we have to
find ways to participate.
We take -- collect our field notes, etcetera.
I think one of the disjunctures from my own
personal observations is that, you know, law
enforcement are aware of what those inequalities
are, of what those problems are -- but we
don't see it as our responsibility to lobby
on the behalf of the citizens we serve. We
don't see ourselves in the business of producing
policy.
So I think that the discipline can pull together
some type of academy, and bring officers in,
and teach them, not only about, you know,
the history of race and power, et cetera.
But teach them how to adequately do ethnographic
work, right, and sort of bringing them in,
expose them to the value of anthropology,
but also share with them the skillsets, right?
I have many more, but I'll stop there.
>> DR. BORNSTEIN: I see our time is running,
so I'll make it really brief.
I think that -- I think that there's all kinds
of possibilities for anthropologists to get
involved with this.
I think that the area of policy change, right,
is, part of it is political and marching on
the streets and part of it is a process of
analysis and gathering evidence and making
policy decisions.
You know, we had, in, at John J. we in anthropology,
we live with a lot of this stuff, so we've
done studies with lots of students, going
into their own communities to talk about these
issues, to ask, you know, how, how they perceive
different things, as Kalfani was saying, about
how what the experience of policing is.
It could be working with law enforcement agencies.
There are -- There is a whole movement of
evidence-based policing.
It could be -- it could be with a certain
advocacy for a demilitarization, so, you know,
to pitch, especially if you're in a small
town or you have a police department in your
large campus, right?
And that, you know... you have a -- an organization,
a trans organization, mental health organization,
something like that, that wants a different
kind of intervention, and you try to set up
a pilot with that small police organization.
These things happen.
And then you help them with a study. How did
it turn out? How did the people respond? We've
done those kind of things in New York on a
big scale. We had a [indiscernible] article
about community courts, going into the community,
asking people, you know, tell me about your
experience with police, with the judge, and
what happened and everything.
And you know, we found, we have findings that
can speak to policy, right, and speak to a
demilitarizing policy, right? So, all of that
is possible. The larger the police organization,
the more difficult it is, but if you're in
a smaller town, it's possible, and there is
a level of professionalism at the top of policing
that appreciates this.
It doesn't really, it's not at the ground
level, I don't think. It's much more an elite
group. But, I mean, those are the ones we
see at John J., but they self-select, and
they show up at a place like there or at George
Mason where they have an amazing program of
evidence-based policing. These are ways that
anthropologists, and they are completely quantitative,
and they need a lot of help with doing community
work. That's where anthropology really comes
in, and why we were working on community justice,
community course project. Because they can
look at recidivism rates, and they can look
at all that stuff, and all that's important,
as Kalfani said, you know, the quant people,
but we add something additional to it that
can explain quantitative things in ways that
didn't make any sense to people, but it explains
how people come up with those numbers.
>> DR. PEREZ: Absolutely, and if I could,
you know, I've actually done research with
police officers and with the larger community,
and it's not as difficult as one would imagine,
precisely because, going back to what Donna
said, when you make clear what it is that
you're working on, and you understand that
the police can benefit from it too, in such
a way, the engagement becomes a much more
shared engagement, even though it may end
up having some really critically important
things for people to unpack, but one of the
other things I would just like to point out
quickly is where our expertise comes in is
because we know these local communities, and
this is why knowing who your anthropologists
are, and our anthropologists in communities,
making sure people know you're available to
begin these conversations where you can take
the community's perspective into it and begin
to set a platform for an engaged conversation
becomes very important.
But also, I just wanna say for those of us
who train, for those of us who mentor, for
those of that are working, teaching mixed
methods is integral. We need to understand
how quantitative data is being captured. We
need to look at that quantitative data. We
need to unpack the categories and the definitions
that went into things like disorderly conduct.
Well, what do you mean by "disorderly conduct"?
What does that qualify for?
And as Shanti had pointed out earlier, you
know, jay walking all of a sudden becomes,
you know, a category, or how a person is dressed
can becomes a category of how the body is
moving, and so it produces a kind of justification.
So as anthropologists, training each other,
making sure that we understand the quantitative
aspect of every bit of our ethnographic analysis,
I think is integral.
>> DR. PARIKH: Can I add --
>> DR. PEREZ: [indiscernible] closed captioning.
I just want to make folks aware that we did
lose our closed captioner, but please, Shanti,
go ahead.
>> DR. PARIKH: I'll just, I'll make this very
quick. It's actually just going to be a list,
because I think my, my colleagues have done
a brilliant job already summarizing as well
as you, Ramona. I just have one thing, you
know, I think as ethnographers, one thing
we know is that people love to tell their
stories, and I, in my, I haven't done a lot
of formal interviewing with police, but I
certainly did some for a Ferguson forum that
we're putting out, and people like to tell
their stories, and when you treat people as
individuals, each of them -- we're not saying
that individual police are bad, I mean in
some ways we are, but you know, when we talk
about policing as the whole system -- so people
love to tell stories, and that's what we as
anthropologists are good at doing.
I think in terms of the violence not only
how anti-Blackness state violence is felt,
but also the survival of Black people in it.
The liberation, so the opposite of the violence,
what is the Black joy? What is the Black liberation?
What is the Black survival?
Second, I think that anthropology always brings
to all of its topics this idea, if we study
the police, like any institution, it has a
historical trajectory. It is embedded within
complicated historical lenses. It has an economic
embeddedness, social embeddedness, and that's
what we bring as anthropologists.
This complex milieu of how whatever institution
we're looking at is situated and is not independent
of any of them, so it's a complicated mess.
Fourth thing. I think that we are also very
right to really -- I love the idea of evidence-based
policing, and I think we're very right to
looking at what is the meaning of this idea
of public safety in, with, in communities.
That also calls to question that the idea
of community is so fraught with complexities.
But if this is a discussion, and if the police
are doing public safety, we have to say, one,
how are we defining community, but two, what
is that public safety, but also anthropology
is good at recognizing that even within what
we are calling community, there are going
to be disciplinary tactics within there.
So community itself is not a monolithic. There
are going to be debates within that about
who is, to be policed.
So all that to say, I think we have a lot
to contribute, and you know, I would love
to look at some -- and the white supremacy
thing.
I have tons of stuff on how that is such a
big part of policing. Again, it serves a particular
instrumental function, because it helps to
shore up the notion of "us vs. them", and
the "them" happens to be these communities
that are a lot of times of color, or masculine,
or, you know, whatever. I'll stop there.
>> DR. PEREZ: So our webinar is past the time
that we had available. I want to first thank
every one of the panelists. I want to thank
our many attendees that were here. We have,
we have a lot of questions that we didn't
get to, and so we're going to focus on that,
and make sure we get some of these answers
out to folks. We will do follow up, so please
look for those.
Dr. Auston, Dr. Parikh, Dr. Bornstein, Dr.
Ture, Daniel, Jeff, Nell, Scott, Gabby -- thank
you so very much for all of your work on this
and for agreeing to continue to work on this
-- you like the way I just slipped that in,
that just you agreed to continue working on
this?
And thank you so much to every one of our
attendees. Thank you for taking the time to
sit with us today and engage with us.
More than anything, let's take this out. Let's
move this out into our communities. Let's
move this out into the street. Thank you,
very much.
>> DR. PARIKH: And thank you, Ramona!
>> DR. TURE: Thank you.
>> DR. AUSTON: Thank you, everyone.
