Racism by design

Posted by on 2021-05-09

When the Citizens for Juvenile Justice report on racial profiling by the New Bedford Police was released in April 2021, the usual police zealots and members of city government attacked CFJJ’s numbers and screamed that New Bedford was different from those “other” cities. We couldn’t possibly be racists.

But it’s not as if police racism has ever been a secret or a surprise. For years local governments everywhere have brushed off community complaints of racial profiling, harassment, and police violence. But over the years a massive body of research has been amassed, showing that — and precisely how — so many of our institutions are corrupted by institutional racism. Sure, there may be a few bad apples in the barrel, but the point is — the barrel itself is rotten. But again, we have long known this and also how to fix it. We just choose not to.

Below is just a small selection of articles on racial profiling available in April 2021, as the Citizens for Juvenile Justice Report was released. While hardly exhaustive, they demonstrate that the NBPD’s racial profiling of Black and Hispanic youth is not unheard of. Everywhere. CFJJ’s numbers are not anomalous. At least one article makes the case that statistical data like CFJJ’s not only confirms the reality of racial profiling, but “furthermore, strong statistical associations should support an inference of discriminatory intent.”

And I agree. Politicians and policy experts have known about the many insidious forms of racial profiling and their costs to society’s most vulnerable for decades, as these articles illustrate. And when cities know the costs of racial profiling and racist policing and still refuse to stop it, then, yes, that’s racism by design.

Police

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