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[Kookle]

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/throughline/id1451109634?i=1000476753768

[jimwalton]

I think it was a reasonably fair treatment of the subject, but it was also distorted in the sense of too many generalizations and stereotyping, and assuming certain prominent cases and problems are representative of the whole. Some (certainly not all) of what he is saying is one-sided to make his point.

There is no doubt that there are lots of racist people, and that it used to be way worse than it is now. There is no doubt that there were authorities in the South to control blacks, though it sounds revisionistic to me to claim that this was the historical origin of all police, as if current police live to racistly repress minorities. I’d have to research, but I can easily imagine there were police forces in Europe and in the northern states that had nothing to do with slave patrols and racist agendas.

Of course it’s true that even after the emancipation and the end of the Civil War that the South still acted to not treat blacks as equals (the Black Codes). No debate there.

The American South has always, perpetually, and historically been more racist than the north, central, or west U.S. I’m having difficulty with the podcast in that they seem to think the ante- and post-bellum South is representative of the whole country, when actually it was the exception and the aberration. That’s why many blacks wanted to move out of the South, because the rest of the country wasn’t like that.

And, of course, the KKK was just evil, but it’s not fair to align them with “American Police.” As they mentioned, the federal gov’t even worked against the KKK.

Jim Crow laws—just wrong. We all know this except the remnant of racists that are still concentrated in the South, but obviously exist in individual souls all over the country and the world.

You’re probably aware that historically the ghettos of the country were often populated by immigrant groups (Italians, Polish, Central American, Chinese). This condition existed in the early 20th century and continued through the Great Depression. We’ve all seen the pictures and documentaries. It wasn’t until after WWII that even in the North, Central, and West that black populations gradually replaced the inner city immigrant populations. I have read somewhere in my past of the reason for that, but I’m having trouble remembering. If I remember right, the poor and oppressed black populations were escaping the racist oppression of the South, and when they came North, the only places they could afford to live were the inner cities, where the European immigrants were now fleeing for the suburbs. But it’s also true that there were systemic racist attitudes even in the North, Central, and West that made it more difficult for blacks to participate in the upward economic swing of the late 1940s and 50s.

Then they talked about the police forces being used as thug forces against labor unions and ghetto populations, and there’s a lot of truth to that. In the time of the Great Depression there was great social unrest and economic tumult. Police were used to protect the money, power, and positions of the industrial and social elites while containing the anarchy of unions, the mob, anti-prohibition booze runners, etc. America was in danger of becoming anarchist, and the cops were used to control it. In the process, as we all know, there was quite a bit of corruption in the police ranks as well, with cops on the take.

What he says about the “police blotters” of the 1920s and 30s is credible. We know there was great antagonism and deprecation, as well as outright hostility, between all of the ethnic groups. The Italians vs. the Polish vs. the Irish vs. the
Germans vs. the Chinese vs. the blacks. And they all had ethnic slur names to identify the other groups. But it’s probably safe to say all (or the far far majority) of the police were white European, so there was no doubt racism against the blacks and the Chinese in particular, but the Chinese were more out west and there was a “history” and “context” with the blacks.

Then, by my estimation, he starts going off the deep end.

“By and large the system [police] was so fundamentally corrupt it was failing.” A statement like this, to me, is too generalized to be credible.

He talks about the professionalization of police as being a white supremacist strategy. I don’t buy that. “They wrote white ethnic criminality out of the crime statistics.” I don’t believe that, either. “Policing professionalizes to protect the white working class.” Not credible. Too one-sided, caricaturish, and slanted. Again, there are some cops that are racist, and those are the offending ones and the ones you hear most about. But it’s not fair to put them all, and even the system, in the same basket.

“Police officers are directly responsible for telling black members how much they don’t matter in this society.” A statement like that just makes me shake my head and say, that’s absurd. Give me a break.

My son-in-law is a policeman. His uncle (now retired) was a police captain. They talk about a few cops in the ranks that are racist, and some are jerks, and some are corrupt, but the force, by a vast, vast majority, is good people trying to good work, protect people, and enforce the law. They know what the training is all about, how the force works, and what the attitude of the department and its officers are.

He says the fundamental question is “Do white people in America still want the police to protect their interests over the rights and interest and rights of black…people.” That’s not the question AT ALL. To me, the question is, “Do we need order over anarchy?” I have NEVER regarded the police as protecting the interests of whites over blacks. That’s ridiculous. I would guess that the way I feel is true of at least 99% of the white population. That’s not what police are or what they are for. I have NEVER had these thoughts, and I would guess most of have not either.