Trump Puts Lincoln Under House Arrest, So He Won't Join Protestors, And Other Thoughts Today

The photo of the secret military force (they wouldn't identify themselves) at the Lincoln Memorial led me to add these words to the photo.

And this video exchange between a protestor and a soldier led me to think that we need to set up sanctuaries for military who find themselves ordered to confront and attack American citizens peacefully protesting.  We need safe places with good attorneys so they can put down their weapons and refuse to participate in Trump's war on people who don't adore him.

Watch all of this. pic.twitter.com/YHq0QhXrnw

— Gadi Schwartz (@GadiNBC) June 2, 2020

This thought was presented by someone on Twitter and people weren't getting his point:

"liberals have learned to call racism "systemic" but then suggest exclusively non-systemic fixes like police trainings as solutions"

They wanted to know what was wrong with police trainings as solutions.  Well, this is something I know a little about.

1.  Police training aims at changing individual attitudes & behavior
2.  Systemic reform changes structures and procedures in institutions that reinforce racist attitudes and behavior

Trying to 'train' people out of racism when the system they're in continues to reward racist behavior and punish people who fight racism just doesn't work.  How do police systems structurally support racism?  The police code of honor punishes police who inform on corrupt, violent, and racist behaviors of their fellow officers.  Selection and promotion procedures have obstacles for minorities that whites don't face.

My first direct encounter with this was while I was doing research in the City of Pasadena for my doctoral dissertation many years ago.  I was interviewing department heads on the privacy practices for personnel files.  I was taking notes as the city's doctor - who did physical exams applicants particularly for the police and fire departments - showed me how the files were managed.  At some point he showed me some X-rays he used to screen out applicants.  One had a different curve in the spine from the other.  If they have this curve, he told me, they are going to have back problems in the future, so we screen them out.  Then, almost as an afterthought, he mentioned that all blacks have that curve.  He'd known me all of maybe 45 minutes and just assumed I would see nothing wrong with that.  He didn't know that the new City Manager was questioning me every day about what I was finding.

More recently I served as an expert witness for a fire fighter who sued the Municipality of Anchorage because of discrimination when he couldn't pass the subjective part of the promotion exam several times.  He scored well on the objective parts, but not in the parts where the all white panel makes judgments about people's 'moral' strengths.  He won a $700,000 judgment.  But only after taking significant personal financial risk of hiring an attorney for years of preparation and court time.  If he had lost the case he would have been financially ruined.  I'd note the Fire Fighters union also found nothing wrong with the process when he went to them for help, but then they represented the members of the promotion panel too.  It was then I began to see that police and fire fighter unions make large contributions to mayors and council candidates.  Police reform is hard when the union is made up of 80 or 90 percent white officers.  I strongly believe in the importance of unions, I also see where they can perpetuate racist systems.  Mayors are reluctant to make significant changes that would negatively impact the members of unions that donate big to their campaigns.

Changing these hidden parts of the system, which few people understand is what we mean by systemic or institutional change.