Re: Riots and Racists and Looting...OH MY!!!
The issue is there is at least a perceived difference, if not an actual difference, between in the outcomes of situations a white person can imagine themselves being in as opposed to one where they think they have control by "behaving correctly." Whereas the whole problem is that black people feel like they can do everything "right" and still wind up a corpse because Johnny Law has a racial profile of suspect criminality and blacks automatically make the cut.
Imagine a bad neighborhood. You don't walk through it because no matter what you're doing bad things can happen to you: at best you'll get hassled, more likely you'll get threatened, injured, or even killed.
Now imagine the bad neighborhood is anywhere there's a cop, simply because you are black. Any time you go outside, you're in a bad neighborhood. Plus there's no cops to protect you.
That's what white folk can't seem to fathom.
I'm not saying there isn't a severe relationship problem between law enforcement and the black community. That's pretty obvious, even to a whitey here in the midwest. My link was just a goodnatured poke at Handy, who is from the Twin Cities area, and the story I linked to was just in the news in that area. I'll be honest, I was surprised when I heard they indicted this patrolman for manslaughter.
Towards your point, I remember watching Bryant Gumbel's show on HBO this year and a segment on a police department out in California somewhere, I think maybe Oakland. The cops realized they had a bad relationship problem with the community. They got no cooperation in solving crimes. So a couple of officers applied for and received a five year grant to start a football program, with the cops as coaches. The theory was that if they could get to kids when they're 10-12 years old, and develop an element of trust, maybe the relationship between the police and the community could be opened up a bit.
Now, these were black cops. The response of the parents in the community was "no way." My kid is not going to have anything to do with cops. That's obviously very telling, at least from my perspective, in that this is clearly a very deep and significant problem, and it's not all about race, if it's about race at all.
At the time of the airing of the story, obviously the cops had made some headway (or it would have never seen HBO). Some of the parents who had been most outspoken against were ultimately persuaded to let kids participate. The kids, of course, just like playing football.
This is not a problem government alone can solve. It's not a problem police departments can solve. It's going to take cooperation and effort from the black community.
I think programs like the football one are great programs, and a great use of grant money, whether it comes from government or foundations or wherever. Police departments need to look for and be open to ideas that make them a part of the community, to build relationships and trust. But there should also be people in the black community who step forward with the goal of saving their own community and look for methods like the football program that can build relationships. It doesn't do any good to just raise your kid to distrust cops and always keep your hands in sight when they're around.