Recent tragic events across the country have raised awareness of the use
of violence in the police force. Most recently in Baltimore - and from Ferguson
to Madison - local police forces have been debated and defended, accused and
inspected - locally, in national news outlets, and around the world.
Thursday, April 30, 2015
What are "these" people so mad about? The answers aren't so complicated.
I want to tell you a personal story.
Madison Community: How will it move forward?
What kind of community do we want as citizens of Madison?
I think that the kind of community that people in Madison want is one where people are treated fairly. I think that people in Madison want a community where entire communities are not left out of the economic opportunity in our city or face barriers and unequal treatment that cause large negative effects in people's lives.
I think that the kind of community that people in Madison want is one where people are treated fairly. I think that people in Madison want a community where entire communities are not left out of the economic opportunity in our city or face barriers and unequal treatment that cause large negative effects in people's lives.
Diversity Is More Than Black And White
"We are living in an increasingly multicultural world, and new ethnic groups are quickly gaining consumer power. Our company [nonprofit organizations] needs a demographically more diverse workforce to help us gain access to these differentiated segments" (Thomas & Ely, 2004)
Everyone has heard some version of this golden rule: do not judge someone's life until you have walked a mile in their shoes.
Everyone has heard some version of this golden rule: do not judge someone's life until you have walked a mile in their shoes.
Diversity: Its Benefits and Challenges
I am writing this blog several days
after the death of Freddie Gray, a black male of 24, who was confronted by
policemen in Baltimore, Maryland, while riding a bicycle. During the arrest, his neck was broken, and
he died several days later. Riots in
Maryland’s black communities followed, policemen were injured, cars and
buildings were set afire and the National Guard was called in. Now, civic leaders, the media and political
analysts are offering their perspectives on what went wrong. Unabated joblessness, racial bias and police
brutality are common themes, but I haven’t heard much about cultural
differences, including police culture, or communication.
One might ask, if police forces are
and have diversified in terms of gender and race integration since the last
quarter of the 20th Century, why are there still problems? One answer is that contemporary constructs of
diversity and integration are understood superficially. For example, segregated racial and ethnic
enclaves can mix with a dominant culture’s civic and work environments, but
they may not interpret, perceive or respond to things differently than the
prevailing culture’s norms and mores.[1]
American police agencies exemplify what Thomas and Ely describe as discrimination-fairness and access-legitimacy paradigms, based on gender and racial assimilation to achieve a demographically representative workforce.[2] The problem with these integration models is that the skills, beliefs and values of different cultures are not legitimated, absorbed or translated into the real work that is done on the front lines. In other words, there is a learning deficit on the part of the dominant culture.
American police agencies exemplify what Thomas and Ely describe as discrimination-fairness and access-legitimacy paradigms, based on gender and racial assimilation to achieve a demographically representative workforce.[2] The problem with these integration models is that the skills, beliefs and values of different cultures are not legitimated, absorbed or translated into the real work that is done on the front lines. In other words, there is a learning deficit on the part of the dominant culture.
The consequences of this are well
documented in the literature of airplane crashes, which claim that their main
causes are errors in teamwork and communication predicated on cultural legacy,
i.e., the assumptions and perceptions handed down by the history of the
communities people come from.” [3]
Researchers found that in a cockpit,
cultural deference norms dominated. Even
when subordinates preemptively identified errors, they remained non-assertive
towards those perceived as “in charge.”[4]
The disproportionate killing of
black males by policemen attest that learning from those of different racial
and ethnic backgrounds is missing from police cultures in cities across
America. Even if law enforcement workplaces
are representatively diversified, those of different racial backgrounds may feel
pressure to fit into the dominant culture, to the extent that they defer to
those in higher ranks or to teammates rather than speak out against excessive
force used on racially different suspects.
The glaring problem is that of communication
awareness within context of cultural differences. If learning about cultural communication
differences occurred in police training curriculums, perhaps Eric Garner would
be alive today. In July 2014, Eric
Garner died after an NYPD officer put him in a chokehold. An irritated Mr. Garner told the police who
accosted him on suspicion of selling untaxed cigarettes individually to passersby
that he was “tired of being harassed”. A
group of officers moved in to arrest him, one of whom took Garner’s wrist
behind his back, to which he backed up and swatted the officer’s arms
away. In response, the officer put his
arm around Garner's neck and pulled him backwards and down onto the ground.
After the officer removed his arm from Garner's neck, he pushed Garner's face
into the ground while four more officers moved to restrain Garner, who repeated
"I can't breathe" eleven times while lying face down on the sidewalk.
After Garner lost consciousness,
officers finally turned him onto his side to ease his breathing, but it was too
late.
Noticeably absent from this scene were black
officers, who might have used their cultural perspectives and communication
skills to diffuse Mr. Garner’s defensive animosity. Perhaps they would have interpreted in a
nonthreatening way his angry frustration of being “harassed.” Perhaps, instead, they would have issued Mr.
Garner a warning about NYC sales tax compliance, giving him time to think
objectively, without demeaning and further antagonizing him.
Perhaps, too, the death of Freddie Gray could have
been averted if policemen worked in racially-integrated teams, each
demonstrating their cultural skills to the other, learning what it means to
serve their communities authentically, by reflecting the reality of people’s
lives in their reactions and decisions.
In this way they would earn genuine authority. (Wood, M. & Harwood,
R., 2005)[5]
[1]
Sowell, Thomas. "A world view of
cultural diversity." Society 29.1 (1991): 37-44.
[2]
Thomas, David A., and Robin J. Ely.
"Making differences matter: A new paradigm for managing diversity." Harvard
business review 74.5 (1996): 79.
[3] Gladwell,
Malcolm. Outliers: The Story of Success,
Ch. 7, “The Ethnic Theory of Plane Crashes,”2008. New York: Little, Brown
and Company.
[4]
Ibid.
[5] Wood, M. R. "Standards of
Excellence in Civic Engagement: How Public Agencies Can Learn from the
Community, Use What They Learn, and Demonstrate that Public Knowledge
Matters." The Harwood Institute (2005).
How Can We Make 1+1=3?
In November, the unarmed African American teenager
Michael Brown died after being shot by a white officer in Ferguson, and in
March, Tony Robinson died after being shot by an officer here in Madison (Buchanan
et al., 2014). Until eight months ago, I lived in Sweden, where the increase
from one to six deadly officer involved shootings yearly has been challenged. (Hårdh
& Stauffer, 2015) I do think that the average U.S. police officer faces a
larger number of challenging and stressful situations than the average Swedish one
does. Nevertheless, I believe we have a problem when unarmed individuals loose
their lives. Furthermore, the response reminds us that structural racism exists
and makes me question if this is really the land of opportunity for all. With that
said, the focus of this blog is not to provide a description of the problem –
but instead to give good arguments for diversity and discuss how you and I, as
leaders and individuals, can promote it.
Statistics tell us that hundreds of police
departments are not representative of the communities in which they serve - the percentage of whites
in the police force is many times more than 30 percentage points higher than in the
community. These findings go against convincing evidence that a more representative police force will be more credible and build more trust in the
communities in which they serve. (Ashkenas & Park, 2015) Furthermore, we know
that, in general, more diverse organizations perform best and make better
decisions. However, as pointed out by Page (2007) and Thomas and Ely (1996), if
we want to build more productive organization we have to go beyond thinking
about diversity as identity-group representation – think instead about the
“varied perspectives and approaches to work that different identity groups
bring”. Page (2007) gives evidence that a diverse group of individuals can
outperform groups with “high ability” individuals because diverse perspectives
and heuristics result in superadditivity (1+1=3). This economic logic of
diversity is also supported by Robinson and Dechant (2007).
So, what should leaders do? I believe each and
every one of us can do a lot – and that we have a responsibility to do so. We
can question our own assumptions. We can promote conversation. We can ask
ourselves as well as others “Why?”. Implicit biases suggest that we might not
only be unwilling to admit attitudes and beliefs, but we might also unknowingly
hide something from ourselves as well as others. (Project Implicit, 2011) A recent report by the Sentencing Project (2014)
shows how these biases makes “white Americans overestimate the proportion of
crime committed by people of color,
and associate people of color with criminality” – up to 20-30 percent for
certain crimes.
In
light of these findings, we sometimes have to listen to things we
might not want to hear. When you hear someone argue that people of color are
overrepresented in the criminal statistics – ask why they think that is. As
Charles M. Blow points out in his column in The New York Times, it is true that
crime rates are higher in minority neighborhoods – but why is that? Is there a
correlation between race and concentrated poverty? Do poorer schools and limited
job opportunities impact if you manage to leave a high-poverty, high-crime
neighborhood? (Blow, 2014)
Furthermore, we can ask ourselves what we base our perception of the world on. I would like to end by showing this satiric clip illustrating how biased media can be in covering crime
involving people of color. It
reminds me that we should aim to ensure that
tolerance, strong values and solutions survive, grow stronger and finally win –
creating a world where there is only us.
References
Ashkenas, Jeremy & Park, Haeyoun. 2015. The
Race Gap in America’s Police Departments, The New York Times. Retrieved from: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/09/03/us/the-race-gap-in-americas-police-departments.html?_r=0
Buchanan, L et al.. 2014. What Happened in
Ferguson? The New York Times. Retrieved from: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/08/13/us/ferguson-missouri-town-under-siege-after-police-shooting.html
Blow, Charles M. 2014. Crime and Punishment. The
New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/01/opinion/charles-blow-crime-and-punishment.html
Ghandnoosh, Nazgol. 2014. Race and Punishment:
Racial Perceptions of Crime and Support for Punitive Policies. The Sentence
Project. Retrieved from: http://www.sentencingproject.org/doc/publications/rd_Race_and_Punishment.pdf
Hårdh, Robert & Stauffer, John. 2015. Debattreplik om polisens dödsskjutningar. Civil
Rights Defenders. Retrieved from: http://www.civilrightsdefenders.org/sv/news/svenska-debattreplik-om-polisens-dodsskjutningar/
Page, Scott E. 2007. Making the Difference:
Applying a Logic of Diversity, Academy of Management, vol. 21 no. 4
Project Implicit. 2011. Education. https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/copyright.html
Reactions to Oppression
Let me begin by saying
that much like Deray McKesson who recently spoke with Wolf Blitzer on CNN (http://www.rawstory.com/2015/04/activist-smacks-down-wolf-blitzer-you-are-suggesting-broken-windows-are-worse-than-broken-spines/)
I support peaceful protesting, and having trained police officers in crisis
intervention I have great respect for law enforcement and the risks they take and
also know that there are dedicated, kind, caring, and compassionate people who
serve on the police force. At the same time, much like McKesson I refuse to
criticize those who have rioted over the police brutality that has resulted in
the death of Freddie Gray. The predominant focus of the media over the last few
days on destruction of property in regard to the Baltimore riots, and the
predominant response of white people in concern over riots that have resulted
in property damage (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/04/28/1380944/-The-Dominant-White-Response-to-Baltimore-Shows-Why-Black-Residents-are-Justified-in-their-Anger)
to be quite frank is unacceptable. Comparisons between movements can be
problematic, and I don’t want to draw direct comparisons, rather I want to highlight
two other movements here to express why I personally cannot condemn these riots
and to hopefully illustrate why focusing on condemnation of riots versus
condemnation of the despicable inequities which caused those riots is hypocritical.
Reflecting on the movement of my own marginalized
community, the queer community, those of us who identify across the LGBTQ
spectrum cannot so easily condemn rioting when riots are exactly what started
our modern movement for civil rights equality at Stonewall in 1969 (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/introduction/stonewall-intro/).
We retaliated against police raids and arrests that were destroying our
communities and our lives in that moment and began a movement for our rights
and for change which I as an openly gay man in my mid 20s have reaped the benefits
of and am thankful for. I should also note that our community rose up in riot
when the killer of Harvey Milk was convicted of only manslaughter rather than
murder in 1979, receiving a sentence of 7 years (which wound up only being 4)
rather than a harsher sentence (http://thecastro.net/milk/whitenight.html).
Given these events and the impact they had I cannot condemn the rioting that is
currently happening because it would be hypocritical to say that my community
was allowed to riot against injustice enforced and enacted by the police but
communities of color are not permitted to do the same.
While this example of rioting as rejection of
oppression is one that feels more salient to me there is another that is
applicable to a much larger proportion of the American populous. I think we
forget the history of our nation in these moments and that the United States
itself was born out of retaliation against oppression. The Boston Massacre of
1770 where 5 men were killed by British soldiers, the passage of the Tea Act of
1773 which symbolized the concept of “taxation without representation” and led
to the Boston Tea Party, and other oppressive acts of the British government led
to fighting with British soldiers, the declaring of independence in 1776, and
fighting a war to escape an oppressive regime (http://www.history.com/topics/american-revolution/american-revolution-history). The colonization of the Americas was an oppressive act in and of itself and,
again, it is not my intent to make direct comparisons here between movements or
between British soldiers and modern police; however, I think it’s important to
realize that when people are oppressed they react.
Black Americans experience economic inequity,
educational inequity, and disproportionate rates of incarceration (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/20/upshot/americas-racial-divide-charted.html?_r=0&abt=0002&abg=1;
http://www.naacp.org/pages/criminal-justice-fact-sheet)
just to name a few systemic injustices. I am not saying rioting will inevitably
right those injustices, but I am saying what needs to be criticized here are
the oppressions, the inequities, the injustices, not the breaking of windows.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)