RACE RELATIONS: Local leaders call for change, not just ‘thoughts and prayers’
A caravan of Houstonians are traveling to Baton Rouge, La., this morning to show support for Alton Sterling, the black man who was shot by a police officer there last week.
“White America seems to be having difficulty understanding our widespread plea for justice,” said Shelondra Peavy, a local writer who helped promote the caravan. “So perhaps we need to ask for something that is more understandable. Perhaps we need to make a plea for peace and love. We need peace of mind, knowing that we won’t be killed ‘for the hell of it.’ ”
The officer-involved shooting of Sterling last week, and then another African-American man in Minneapolis, and then the shooting of five Dallas police officers has brought a decades-old discussion about race in America to a new feverpitch.
“Enough is enough,” said state Sen. Sylvia Garcia, a Houston Democrat. “I accept responsibility to work on policies that will help our society root out racism, racial profiling, and economic disparities. Thoughts and prayers alone
will not fix these problems.”
The Rev. William Lawson of Wheeler Avenue Baptist Church, a fixture in black Houston for decades, has seen neighborhoods disintegrate and economic opportunities fade for many African-Americans. That phenomenon later was mirrored in hundreds of America’s white communities that depended on factory labor, but the shadow of racism added another layer of misery.
“People who were in the bottom of the economic class were almost pitted against each other,” Lawson said. “We have faced increasing tension between poor whites and poor non-whites. We never really dealt with the economic issue. We made it sound as though in the 1950s … our chief problem was racial segregation. If we could desegregate, we could end the problems we had, without seriously ending the real problem.” Dialogue needed
Amid dwindling economic opportunity came changes in policing practices. It was not just that patrol officers often did not know the people who lived where they worked, but they felt little in common with them, Lawson said.
“We increasingly militarized our police departments, so there was less and less communication or contact between (residents and) the criminal justice system,” he said. “It is simply not enough to have warm conversations between churchgoing blacks and police.”
Lawson and others point to growing political enmity, especially in Congress, that at times bolsters that sense of racial divide, two groups who speak the same language but fail to understand the other.
“We have seen progress on the political side, but there are efforts to cut back on that,” said Rodney Ellis, a Democratic state senator from Houston. “An element of insensitivity has come about. We have to have a dialogue about both sides of this issue. It’s certainly not one-sided. To the extent that people try to make it so, that is dishonest and only makes the problem worse.”
A black assailant of a police officer invariably is described as evil, Ellis pointed out. Or worse, a terrorist. But a racist officer who commits an unjustified shooting is dismissed as a “bad apple,” an anomaly. Few are prosecuted and even fewer convicted.
The universal presence of smartphone cameras may put a spotlight on the consequences of such failings, but that light so far has done little more than heighten frustration.
Controversial local activist Quanell X, a longtime critic of police, called the rise of social media and its viral videos a “gift from God” for exposing brutality that he claims many average citizens thought were doubtful or exaggerated. But with that, he said, has come rising disillusionment.
“Our young people are saying that black people have been marching for 50 years against police misconduct,” Quanell said. “Has anything changed? It’s gotten worse.”
The Rev. F.N. Williams, pastor of Antioch Baptist Church, recalled a time when police officers were more frequently seen in the neighborhoods, a casual presence that built personal relation- ships and greater trust. He says those days are gone.
“I don’t believe that there is as much race relationship as there has been in the past. Our community is really frightened by police,” said Williams, who also serves as president of Ministers Against Crime. “They’re not in the community anymore. They’re only in the community when crime happens.” Constant concern
Former Houston Mayor Annise Parker finished her three terms last year much as she began it, with race very much on her mind when the subject turned to law enforcement. She said it was a constant concern for police administration, acknowledging that no matter how persistent the refrain to be both smart and fair, officers did “screw up” more often than was acceptable.
“I think we shoot too many people,” Parker said. “We used technology such as dashcams very early on, and going to bodyworn cameras … makes folks on both sides of the camera work better. (But) the only thing that really matters in the end is if the communities that are policed feel like they get justice.”
Too often, they don’t. The pas- tor Williams fears what actions such as the Dallas shootings will inspire.
“You have a rising tide of racist extremists again,” Williams said, noting that he also feels the swell of hatred in his own community. Older folks who were proud of civil rights achievements are discouraged by an increasingly divisive social climate, he said.
“Senior citizens have lost heart,” Williams said. “They tired of fighting, they’re tired of struggling.”
Change will come only when it is equally desired, or as Lawson put it, when people of all backgrounds “feel sufficiently disgusted with the violence going on in our communities.” Quanell, whose advocacy career often involves interaction between police and black suspects, suggests it would be smart to fear the worst.
“The problem is many of our young people now are losing faith in videos,” he said. “Even when people have a video … the white perpetrators are still not brought to justice.”
What happens next, he said, is all but inevitable:
“Injustice breeds insanity.”