In considering the black and white police officers charged with the killing of Freddie Gray, I remembered a photo taken many years ago of my brother while marching in Washington against the KKK. The photo of the black police officer glaring at him always spoke to me of the systemic and systematic power of racism being pressed on and perpetuated against the same. The enemy literally becomes you to subdue and kill. This is a historical reality of maintaining systems of power and economics both unlawfully and lawfully. Consider the "three strikes" laws which largely imprison black and brown people for non-violent crimes in support of the prison industrial complex in which black officers participate.
The expression on the black police officer's face while looking at my brother is one of contempt. This man is merely once removed from the open brutality and death sanctioned by police departments throughout the country against people who look like him in support of men who rode around with white hoods inflicting terror in the heart of others. Yet, he seems to not even consider this while working within a system that has historically abused its power against "him." It is not simply a matter of doing a job, but how that job is done and the conditioning that comes with it. Consider the perverse psychology of the master who endowed the slave with the power to savagely beat his mother, father and siblings in the cotton field to maintain an utterly immoral, perverse, yet immensely advantageous financial system which resulted often in death.
Most regrettably, that there were black police officers involved in the killing of Freddie Gray is a part of our brutal, gruesome history.
