Thomas Sowell is one of our National Treasures and today he addresses a popular meme, 'Driving While Black', that has done a great deal of damage to relations between Black and White in this country. He is not convinced that we live in an irredeemably racist society and that the police are by nature and institutionally racist; at the same time he notes the prevalence of the feeling in the Black community:
Recently a well-known black journalist told me of a very different experience. He happened to be riding along in a police car driven by a white policeman. Ahead of them was a car driving at night with no headlights on and, in the dark, it was impossible to see who was driving it.
When the policeman pulled the car over, a black driver got out and, when the policeman told him that he was driving without his lights on, the driver said, "You only pulled me over because I am black!"
This was said even though he saw the black man who was with the policeman. The driver got a ticket.
Later, when the journalist asked the cop how often he got such responses from black drivers, the reply was "About 80 percent of the time."
When the same journalist asked the same question of black cops, the answer was about 30 percent of the time -- lower, but still an amazing percentage under the circumstances.
Sowell wonders whether there is a relatively prosaic explanation for the attitude:
In a world where young blacks, especially, are bombarded with claims that they are being unfairly targeted by police, and where a general attitude of belligerence is being promoted literally in word and song, it is hard not to wonder whether some people's responses to policemen do not have something to do with the policemen's responses to them.
Neither the police nor people in any other occupation always do what is right but automatic belligerence is not the answer.
The intersection of Black victimhood and Black paranoia is dangerous and crippling.
Paranoia is a dysfunctional state based on the unconscious defense of projection. When the projection is idiosyncratic, ie in individual cases, it can lead to Paranoid Character Disorders and Paranoid Psychoses, including Paranoid Schizophrenia. Projection works by attributing unacceptable impulses, usually aggressive, to others so as not to experience them as coming from oneself. An individual may be filled with murderous rage which is intolerable. He projects the anger and imagines that others hate him and want to harm him. The Paranoid Character is a person who believes everyone is out to get him. In response he will often rationalize harming others, ie "Do unto others before they can do unto you." The Paranoid Schizophrenic loses any sense of reality in his psychosis. He imagines others want to harm and kill him and explains such things by invoking various delusional ideas, that he is Christ returning and thus the target of those allied with Satan, or that others hate him because he has special powers and they are jealous of him.
When the projection is endorsed and sanctified by one's "tribe" it is no longer considered diagnostic of a paranoid character or paranoid psychosis (in the absence of other signs and symptoms.) We might think of this as the Paranoia of everyday life. Nonetheless, such projection has consequences.
Young Black men, especially, have been indoctrinated to believe that their problems are primarily caused by a racist White society. This meme has been profitably exploited by the race-based grievance mongers who have made a tidy living off extorting the "White power structure" who are offered the choice of paying off the Al Sherptons and Jesse Jacksons of the world or face accusations of racism. The liberal establishment has promulgated the victimhood meme as well, in response to White guilt and in the service of opportunistic power politics. The young Black men who are victimized by being draped with and accepting the mantle of victimhood approach every interaction with a Police Officer as if it involves a potential attack; when you expect an attack and use an offensive defense in response, the outcomes least sought by all (consciously) becomes more likely.
If I may add to Sowell's experience, I would note that my two oldest sons, one now 26 and the other 19, have both been pulled over by Police on numerous occasions for the crime of "Driving While Adolescent", which is apparently a much more common offense than "Driving while Black." If Black adolescents interpret these interactions with Police as racially motivated rather than related to their age cohort, the projection-reaction sequence can be easily set in motion.
My sons have always been extremely polite and respectful to the Police when pulled over. They might have been annoyed, even furious, at being pulled over for no apparent reason, but they always made sure to behave in a polite and respectful manner. (Beyond the problems they knew they could get into if they were obnoxious to the Police, they also knew that were they to get into trouble with the Police, it would be a very, very long time before they would have the keys to the car again.)
Many young Black men, as with so many young men of all tribes, tend to have a surfeit of aggression. Once they have received permission to act out their anger in response to imagined threats, the situation can easily turn combustible. Add in that far too many young Black men are raised without the leavening effects of fathers who could help them learn to control and channel their aggression, and the situation worsens. On top of that, the enhanced Narcissism of their cohort, which includes extreme sensitivity to slights and "disses" with the concomitant need to demand "respect", and the situation of a Police Officer stopping a Black man for a routine traffic stop becomes fraught with danger. The unfortunate reality that young Black men are statistically more likely to be involved in crime, especially violent crime, puts the Police on their guard, as well, which clearly worsens the situation.
Most people recognize that when a Police Officer pulls you over, a polite and respectful response is much more likely to elicit a complimentary response. A belligerent response to the Police puts them on edge and increases the likelihood of a belligerent response in return. If the Black leadership were to emphasize to young Black men the disrepute they bring to all members of their tribe by their hostile attitude, most vividly expressed through the rap songs which celebrate "popping a cap" in the enemy/police, and emphasize the utility of respect and politeness in making everyone's lives more pleasant, perhaps the idea that "Driving While Black" is a crime would someday no longer be an acceptable excuse for maladaptive behavior.
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