Are Police Turning Camera Shy?
Most disturbing is the possibility that some police have come to rely so much on abusive and otherwise questionable tactics that they are not sure of how to fight crime without them?
Either way, we are asking for big trouble if we try to cast law enforcement as a stark choice between "too lax" and "too aggressive." We need to seek a middle ground between, say, letting suspected criminals run free and shooting them in the back.
That is why I say that we African-Americans, among others, need to avoid appearing to be suspicious. That's not easy when faced with people who consciously or unconsciously view all African-Americans as suspicious, but, simply as a matter of self-protection, it is prudent for us to try.
That's the message my prudent parents gave me as a young black male heading out into the world with my big Afro -- and it is one that I have passed on to my dreadlocked son.
And it is a message for which black Harvard Law Prof. Randall Kennedy argues in a recent Harper's magazine essay for a "sensible black respectability politics" of the sort that fueled the civil rights movement.
Purely as a matter of self-protection, he writes, African-Americans should avoid the sort of stereotypical behavior that contributes to racial profiling and other discrimination.
"It is unfortunate that safety might require such self-consciousness," he points out, "and it is imperative to reform society such that self-defense of this sort is no longer needed. In the interim, however, blacks should do what they can to protect themselves against the burdens of a derogatory racial reputation that has been centuries in the making."
Many African-Americans, particularly the young and angry, may bristle at the suggestion that they avoid such stereotypes. Yet that's precisely what we are asking police to do, especially when they seem to be turning unreasonably camera shy.
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(E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@tribune.com.)
(c) 2015 CLARENCE PAGE DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.
