What Can Cities Do To Ease Racial Tension?

Jet, May 28, 2001

The recent civil unrest in Cincinnati over a policeman's fatal shooting of an unarmed Black man, Timothy Thomas (JET April, 30), is the latest in a series of growing incidents across the U.S. that have inflamed racial tension.

Other incidents over the past three years, including the dragging death of James Byrd Jr. on a rural East Texas road (JET June, 29, 1998) and the police shooting death of unarmed Amadou Diallo in New York (JET April, 26, 1099) have enraged Black communities and left citizens, politicians, academics and civil rights activists asking: What can cities do to ease racial tension?

According to a recent report: Racial Profiling--A symptom of Biased-Based Policing by the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives (NOBLE), racial profiling is inflaming racial tension nationwide and is one of the most critical issues facing law enforcement today.

"Law enforcement's denial and refusal to address this issue has led to the deterioration of public trust and confidence in the criminal justice system, and has strained police and community relations," states Maurice Foster, executive director of NOBLE.

NOBLE identified racial profiling as "biased-based policing ... also known as `Driving While Black or Brown.' And it has its roots in the old Jim Crow laws, and continues to live and manifests itself in law enforcement today," says Foster.

The solution, explains Foster, is for police to be more approachable and to re-establish trust within the community. "A great sense of this problem is the police departments themselves. They need better data collection and tracking of such incidents, because you can't manage what you can't account for." He says once this is established it will re-instill confidence in the community.

Diversity within law enforcement is critical as well, stresses Foster. One of the reasons why (racial profiling) persists is because of a lack of diversity, which causes a lack of perspective.

Captain Ron Davis of the Oakland Police Department researched and wrote the report for NOBLE. He says that police officers in leadership positions "have to listen to what the community is telling them.

"They must accept that those perceptions are the reality of the complainers. You have to accept that there is a segment of the population that feels mistreated. It's up to police leadership to set clear policies against profiling.

"In Cincinnati there were warning signals well before (the riots)," according to Davis. "These things don't just happen overnight, but build over time. We (police leadership) have a habit of going straight into denial ... Meanwhile the city's tension turns into a powder keg and any incident can touch it off."

Davis believes police in leadership positions have to have an open mind, and do some research when it comes to community complaints.

Davis says there is going to be something positive from the Cincinnati tragedy. But cities should call for mediating with the police, city officials, civil rights leaders and activists, as well as the community to determine how to best address public concerns. But this has to be done before things come to a head, he warns.

Noted Black intellectual Dr. Cornel West, professor of Afro-American studies at Harvard University and co-author of Restoring Hope: Conversations on the Future of Black America, tells JET that when "police start to treat people with respect and there are jobs with a living wage, connected with decent education, housing and healthcare, (then) there will be very low racial tension in this country."

West says that there "is a quiet riot in every chocolate city in America" and that race relations must be understood in terms of class and power struggle.

"Anytime you have a conservative atmosphere in this country, it's open season on Black people. That's historically been the case and that's what we're dealing with now.

"We have to keep in mind the quiet riots as well as the large riots," he warns. "There's a quiet riot going on this very moment in every chocolate city in America; in terms of decrepit housing, dilapidated public school systems and unavailable healthcare. That's the quiet riot that sits at the center of every loud riot."

West adds that "Blacks would have a quiet riot no matter what, but as people speculate whether or not there will be `a long, hot summer' they mean whether the quiet riot will be transformed into a loud riot. Cincinnati had a quiet riot. The police were trigger happy against Black people and (the powers that be) weren't doing anything about it. That's a quiet riot. But it transformed into a loud riot when Black folks finally allowed their rage to overflow," says West. "We have to be as concerned about the quiet riot as we are with the loud riots."

Kweisi Mfume, national president of the NAACP, stated days after the Cincinnati riots that the city is now "ground zero for race relations in our nation" and called for a federal probe of the city's police department.

"It is clear that the local police department has targeted African-American citizens because of their race," said Mfume.