Police brutality a symptom of our centuries-old racist society that allows it | Opinion

Unfortunately, the nationwide protests over the death of George Floyd are focused on the wrong target. The problem is not the police; the problem is us. The police didn’t create the economic and political disparities in this country. Our white power structure did. The police are only following the directions provided by the people they serve: political leaders at every level who have been following the clear signals from the people who elected them — us.

Through more than two centuries of slavery and almost another 100 years of Jim Crow, this nation, with the institutional support of the legal system, religious leaders, elected officials and the educational system, shortchanged our black brethren and then attributed to them physical, mental and moral shortcomings as the basis for the inequality.

The list of inequities would fill volumes, however, one particular government program, the GI Bill, is illustrative of the larger problem. The GI Bill was passed weeks after the D-Day invasion to assist returning veterans and to attempt to compensate them for their valiant service. While there were no explicit measures within the legislation that excluded the returning 1.2 million black soldiers who served in segregated units, it was structured to give the states, rather than the federal government, authority for its implementation.

As a result, according to researchers, blacks obtained in places as disparate as Mississippi and New York/Northern New Jersey only two out of 3,200 and 100 out of 67,000, respectively, GI Bill housing loans. At the same time, 95 percent of black servicemen who received educational benefits were forced to attend black colleges only, many of which were underfunded and understaffed, as public and private colleges and universities throughout the country excluded blacks on either an explicit or implicit basis.

Given the disparities in opportunity under legislation like the GI Bill, is it any surprise that the net worth of the average white household ($171,000) is 10 times the net worth of the average black household ($17,150)?

In 1963, Gov. George Wallace, who infamously declared, “Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever,” stood at the door of the University of Alabama with the state police at his side to keep two black students from registering to attend. Were the state police the cause of segregation or merely the means by which it was enforced?

The images of a police officer’s knee on the neck of a handcuffed black man are horrific, but it is the subtle, everyday version of racism that best demonstrates the insidious nature of race relations in today’s America. The recent video of a woman attempting to intimidate a board member of the New York Audubon Society bird watching in New York’s Central Park by saying she is going to call the police to tell them that “an African American man is threatening my life” says it all. She clearly understood that her inclusion of “African American” is the dog whistle meant to get a quicker response from the police.

What is most telling about the video is that it lays to rest the vacuous argument that the spate of killings of unarmed black men by police is not noteworthy because it is caused by “a few bad apples” and is not the result of some darker phenomena. Those “bad apples” are there because “we the people” give them license to treat blacks as suspects instead of as citizens.

We must recognize that the criminal actions of some police officers are serious symptoms of a larger problem and it is time for “us” to look deep into our souls to address what is ailing America.

Charles Dusseau is a former MIami-Dade County commissioner.