It is difficult to be an American on the occasion of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday, and not ruminate on the issue of race in America, especially in light of the tragic deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner. But it is also difficult to contemplate the complex issues of race and American history, and reach a simple answer, the way some might.
I would recommend the following article, which is a minority view of a report to the Department of Justice. I recommend anyone interested in the issue of policing, and policing in minority communities a read, no matter what your political orientation:
https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/121019.pdf
According to the article, racial segregation, racial disenfranchisement and legal segregation began in the North, not the South. As functional matter, since the Blacks in the South were slaves, there was not any social question as to where the slaves lived. On the other hand, in the North, there was a political question about where the Blacks could live, and it was solved by creating segregated housing districts, which spread South after emancipation.
As urban policing developed, it developed rooted in urban political machines supported by ethnic immigrants. Blacks did not exist in sufficient numbers in the Northern cities in the late 19th century to wield political power, insuring that they had no real political clout in urban politics. Police jobs were spoils that were handed out to political/ethnic loyalists, and given Black relative political power, there were not many Black policemen, and the Black officers were mostly consigned to segregated Black neighborhoods, often with legal limitations on their ability to arrest Whites.
I think one important point of the article is the historic relationship between the Black man and the police officer: the existence of the Black man was a problem to be controlled. Policing primarily meant driving the Black man into the segregated district and keeping him there. To the police, the Black man was the Other, and to the Black man, the police were the Other.
After the turn of the century, the Progressives did what all real political progressives do: they shut down immigration. Part of their agenda was to clean up political machine politics, and to make police jobs subject to professional standards, and not simply hand outs to political supporters. The other thing they did was to remove residency requirements from police work. A cop could live wherever they wanted, and there was a disconnection between the community subject to policing and the community of the police man. These progressive reforms helped to raise the professional standards of police, but it came at a cost. Given educational disparities and racial discrimination, these Progressive standards did nothing to create more opportunities in the police force for Blacks. The impact of the Progressive reforms had a long term impact on the Black community, in that by restricting immigration, job opportunities became available for Blacks in Northern cities that would have previously gone to immigrants. This lead to the Northern migration, and the flourishing of Black neighborhoods and Black communities in the North. Unfortunately, as Black people coalesced in numbers where they might be capable of exerting political power, civil service restrictions made it difficult to create a police force that had the same face as the community it policed. Moreover, police resources, as is typical, were directed to protecting the interests of the powerful, and not a whole lot changed with respect to the Black community.
Under segregation, combined with policies such as the "Red Light" District, Blacks were confined to segregated spaces in anarchic conditions of crime, vice and disorder. The main police directive was to keep the Blacks where they belonged, not to protect Black citizens from victimization. The relationship between the Black man and the Police was adversarial.
This leads us to a side of the story that the liberal doesn't like to talk about: Black street crime. Black homicide rates are X 7 to X 10 (700% to 1000%) times higher than White homicide rates. Similar relationships can be found with respect to robbery, and other street crimes. We are not having an honest debate about the relationship between Black men and the police if we pretend that Black men are not 700% more likely to be arrested for murdering someone than the White counterparts. (It is not likely a detection or reporting issue because you need a dead body for a murder prosecution.) We can also look at issues with racial profiling--we can oppose racial profiling for egalitarian reasons--but racial profiling is not simply hate or ignorance, it can sometimes be based on rational guesses informed by statistics, resulting racial disparities in arrests. While we can point out that Whites are more likely to engage in crimes like smoking marijuana, the crimes that Whites disproportionately commit are not those which create the same level of existential fear as murder or a mugging. We are dealing with questions that are complex, and tangled, and do not have simple answers.
Here are some links:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/jul/21/family-secret-what-the-left-wont-tell-you-about-bl/
http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2013/crime-in-the-u.s.-2013/offenses-known-to-law-enforcement/expanded-homicide/expanded_homicide_data_table_6_murder_race_and_sex_of_vicitm_by_race_and_sex_of_offender_2013.xls
Although I cannot provide some metaphysical explanation for the data, and not one that all will agree with, I don't think that the relationship between Black street crime and the traditional policing of Black neighborhoods is an accident. If you are not prioritizing the policing of Black neighborhoods, then someone else will, namely urban street gangs. Moreover, because there is no real order over the gangs, the gangs will fight with each other, resulting in murders. If the prosecution of Black on Black crime is not given serious law enforcement attention, then Blacks will prey on Blacks, and over time, a culture of criminality will emerge and reinforce itself.
I believe that certain principles could give rise to an improvement in Black communities:
1.) Reconnect residency and police jobs, even at the cost of police professionalism. An officer who has an existential dependency on a community will approach crime and disorder differently than an outsider.
2.) Strive to create a police force that mirrors the population, even at the cost of police professionalism. For members of a community to have an authority figure that they can identify with is valuable in creating positive alternative role models for youth.
3.) Vigorously prosecute crime in Black neighborhoods, and make sure that criminal actions have serious consequences.
4.) Leave sentencing decisions to local juries and judges, and abolish mandatory sentencing. Let the local community decide the appropriate penalty based on the facts and circumstances of the offense.
4.) Condoning lawlessness is simply a method for dragging a frayed civilization under the domain of the Lord of the Flies. A verdict of a Grand Jury demands respect, not because it is necessarily fair or just, but because it is the best we can humanly do.
People who claim that citizens are entitled to break the law because of their ethnic or racial status are promoting criminal acts on the parts of minorities, which will result in state repression out of fear backed by the majority. For example, if you look at measures of White confidence in the police in the wake of Ferguson, you find that support is higher:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2014/12/09/whites-are-more-confident-than-ever-that-their-police-treat-blacks-fairly/
I doubt this is some essential racial characteristic of the White man. It is a human characteristic of any group that feels threatened by the lawlessness of another group. If you were a Tutsi in Rawanda, and there was a Hutu riot in response to a case of excessive force carried out by a Tutsi police officer, you would likely find the same confidence in the police. We have to live together, and the only way we can do that is through law.
This gets to my problem with the contemporary Left. If you are a Communist, or if you are an ethno-nationalist, a White Supremacist or Black Nationalist, then this race mongering, good-entitled race/bad-privileged race rhetoric is exactly what you want. But if your goal is the integration of the Black community into the greater National community, and if your goal is the empowerment of Black Communities, contemporary liberal rhetoric is both stupid and counter-productive. Get the facts and talk the facts. Stop pretending there are "good" racial groups and "bad" racial groups--both races contain their saints and their sinners--the problems of ethnic and racial relations are structural. Moreover, the problem of human evil will never be solved through creation of the right ethnarchy--Hitler didn't fail to create justice because he was German and not Nigerian. Rather, the only way to overcome evil nonviolently is through mutual repentance and forgiveness. Look at Mandella's work in South Africa if you want a model of racial reconciliation.
For more suggestions on managing urban policing, you can link to this article by the late William Stuntz of Harvard Law School:
http://www.harvardlawreview.org/wp-content/uploads/pdfs/stuntz_unequaljustice.pdf
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