Every time a police officer is exposed for misconduct toward a black person, we all get a glimpse into the luxuries of privileged thinking. In the world of white suburbia it is just too unfathomable to believe that the entire policing system is corrupt. So black America, despite living under the constant threat of police brutality, has to sit back and listen to the narrative get shrugged off as just a "few bad apples." I do have to admit that in 2020 with live uncensored cell phone footage, the pure denial of the black experience is truly puzzling. How can some people be so enamored by their own experience that they refuse to believe anything different exists?
Unfortunately for the people who actually live these uncomfortable realities--mass incarceration is real, racial profiling is real, police brutality is real, and wrongful convictions are real. Prisons are contemporary plantations. I don't say this as some kind of cute analogy but rather as a rational interpretation of these institutions. In fact, many of them never even changed their name or branding. When slavery was "abolished" there were a number of plantations across the South that simply stopped calling themselves plantations and opened up as private prisons. The 13th Amendment was published stating "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction." Stated plainly, these plantation owners turned private prison pushers were permitted under law to continue keeping slaves as long as they could pin them with a crime.
So here is a million dollar question for our "few bad apple" readers; who do you suppose was responsible for finding prisoners to fill these former plantations? With legislation like this it is no wonder they are called officers of the law. Too many particles of the American justice system are rooted in racism. Most of it is so blatant that it is hard to believe anyone would cast doubt. It is time for people to open their minds and stop shrugging off the black experience with irrelevant disclaimers like "not all cops are bad" and the "few bad apples" rhetoric that's based solely on a one-sided experience.