The Thing About Police Culture

New Year. Same Shit.

Never forget that America was a British colony, and thus the notion that the two nations are different is in fact myth. America has worked hard to erase her connection to Britain; she changed rounders to baseball, football to soccer, rugby to football, dropped the u from honour, calls taxis "cabs" and rebranded herself as the land of free speech to contrast the culture of stiff upper lip. What built these two nations though – and what inextricably links all imperial nations – is the coded system of race and class in the quest for and ruins of empire.

Tyre Nichols, an African American man, was beaten to death by five police officers in Memphis earlier this month on January 7th during a traffic stop. He cried out for his mother during the horror of the ordeal. The officers have now been charged with second-degree murder.

It is tragic and awful and heartbreaking.

There is outrage. There is sorrow. There is disbelief. There is confusion.

"How could this happen?!"

The answer: "this is racism!".

The rebuttal: "how can this be racism when the five police officers who beat him to death were also Black?"

Because racism is a system. And white supremacy is an ideology.

You don’t have to be racialized as white to uphold white ideology. Many people of colour do it just fine because it’s easier to be a part of the oppressive system, get a pass and feel somewhat accepted, than to really fight the fight that needs to be fought – to bring true equality for everyone.

The origin of modern-day police culture – particularly in imperial countries and former colonies – is a mechanism to uphold the white ideology. Beginning in the 1700s as "Slave Patrol" with one mission: pursue, apprehend, and return runaway slaves to their owners, by way of excessive force to control and produce desired slave behaviour. Police, militia, "the watch" served to "protect the King’s peace". In other words, protect the King’s stolen property and keep the slaves in check because they weren’t considered human. To afford this, slave patrol was gifted power by way of "slave codes" (legalizing the maltreatment of humans based on their value).

For more on this you can read past Sunday Story: The Invention of Whiteness.

The global system is so well refined you really need to not just look but see. Wherever there is a mechanism of upholding white ideology, there is a bereft quality in the psyche – a void of humanism, and a dehumanization of others that occurs.

Culture is a phenomenal thing. Intangible modes of operation that shape our presence, inform our behaviour and seep into our psyche pulling the puppetry strings behind the curtain. Police culture is its own distinct culture that supersedes individual race into a culture of exerting your power over others. So is militia. You are not white, or black or brown, when you put on that uniform, you are the police, you are the army, you are a specific unit.

When a culture is rooted in an ideology of aggression, tribalism, othering, punishing and controlling all in the name of protecting the King’s peace instead of serving the taxpaying people who afford your livelihood – that’s how we end up in 2023 with these tragedies still happening. A perfectly refined system that’s so baked into the fabric of our existence that it manifests in so many ways that if you aren’t paying attention, you’ll miss it.

There is a significant mental transformation that needs to occur in the spaces that British colonialism left its residue (that’s about 25% of the world), but as James Baldwin said, it is taking too much time. "How much time do you want for your progress?"

May Tyre Nichols rest in eternal peace.

May we all deepen our understanding of the world we live in.

May we find the courage to conduct radical self-examination on our own complicit behaviour.

‘til next Sunday!Z.