So You Want to Talk About Race

Oluo is driving with her brothers, and she gets stopped by a cop for speeding one mile per hour over the speed limit. They all stay calm but are terrified. Oluo tweets that she’s been stopped just in case something happens. Her brother Aham tells the cop that he’s reaching for the registration, waits for approval, and moves his hands slowly. Oluo remembers a time when a cop warned her not to reach for the glove compartment without saying what she’s doing first, otherwise she could get shot. When Oluo gets home, she receives many tweets from her community and people of color asking if she’s safe. She also receives many tweets from strangers asking why she brought race into the issue. 

Truthfully, Oluo doesn’t know if she was racially profiled, but she also knows to never ask a police officer why she’s been stopped (she might end up like Sandra Bland). To Oluo, police brutality is about power, corruption, fear, guns, and accountability. The power that enables police brutality puts everyone at risk, but not equally. Studies show that black drivers are 23 percent more likely to be pulled over; five times more likely to be searched, ticketed, arrested, and killed by cops; and four times more likely to experience police force than white people (including hitting, choking, pepper spraying, tasing, and gun use). It’s clear to Oluo that black people are being targeted.

Oluo isn’t sure if the fear and stress of encountering police is worse, or the persistent denial that this happens to black people. People like to believe that systemic racism doesn’t exist and that there just a few “bad eggs.” Oluo knows it can be difficult for people who look to the police for safety and security to see them as harmful. But she needs people to believe her. She’s scared and hurting, and people are dying.

Oluo suggests looking at historical relationships between police and people of color to help understand why minority communities lack trust in the police. She argues that the country’s first police forces grew out of “Night Patrols” and “Slave Patrols” whose task was to control and capture black and Native American people. In the Jim Crow era, many Southern police offers were also part of the Ku Klux Klan. Oluo argues that since the 18th century, people of color have always experienced higher rates of arrest, assault, and death by police. Police have also consistently been used to intimidate, silence, and punish ethnic minority activists.

Oluo argues that controlling people of color is entrenched American policing history. Among people of color, fear, mistrust, and trauma are also woven in. For Oluo, the damaged caused by police brutality and systemic oppression are multigenerational, and they haven’t healed—because police brutality is still going on. This doesn’t mean that most police officers are “racist, hateful monsters,” but it does mean that American culture has been shaped by media depicting black Americans as “violent criminals.” Today’s politicians use the same lingo when they talk about keeping cities safe from “thugs.” To Oluo, politicians and taxpayers essentially endorse and fund the perspective that black people need to be controlled by police.

Oluo acknowledges that black men are more likely to commit violent offences than white men. But she thinks terms like “black-on-black” crime are fully racist, noting that most crime in white communities happens by white people, but it’s never called “white-on-white” crime. Oluo thinks that communities with more poverty and unemployment will simply have more crime. Oluo explains that on average, the net worth of a black or Hispanic American is less than a tenth of a white American. Native Americans are also three times as poor as white people. Even worse, Oluo asks, what should people of color do when they experience crime but can’t trust the police to protect them? 

Oluo argues that police are armed with guns and empowered by a justice system that protects them. If a civilian experiences harm as a result of unjustified force from a police officer, the officer will likely face few consequences. The situation is different for white people. Oluo notes that police were created “to protect and serve” white communities—there’s no history of violent oppression and abuse. Of course, white Americans have been abused by the police (especially those in the LGBTQ community), but on the whole, white Americans trust the criminal justice system.

To get to a place where everyone can trust the criminal justice system, Oluo thinks that people need to acknowledge the very different history that people of color have with the police. When talking about police brutality, Oluo says that it’s important to remember that what happened to you is “valid and true” but that it’s not everyone’s experience. If you do trust and value the police force, you should expect them to earn the trust and respect of people of color. Oluo argues that people of color don’t want white people to fear the police as much as they do—they want white people support their demands for the right to be able to trust the police.