When two young black men in mid-April were escorted by police officers out of a Center City Philadelphia Starbucks location – the pair have since settled with the City for $1 each and a pledge by local officials to allocate $200,000 to a new high-school program that promotes entrepreneurship – outrage landed mostly with the white female store manager who pleasantly dialed 9-1-1, and the billionaire-dollar Seattle-based company that employed her.
Mr. Richard Ross – the African-American Philadelphia Police Commissioner who in a Facebook live broadcast defended the actions of his officers and then later apologized and admitted he “failed miserably” – was criticized by the national and international media. But at home, the fervor appeared to mostly evade him, save for a lightly-attended protest at his headquarters, an amazingly wonky letter authored by prominent black women that was published online, and some brief condemnation uttered by a handful of elected officials and activists.
What’s more, the condemnation that was offered up focused almost exclusively on the incident itself – in particular, the many ways police could have resolved the conflict – and little-to-nothing was said about Mr. Ross’ duplicitous assertion that the Philadelphia Police Department is committed to equitable policing and that anything less than equity is intolerable.
Drowned out by the calls to boycott Starbucks was a damning statistic that refuted Mr. Ross’ claim: in the 9th Police District, where the 18th & Spruce Street Starbucks is situated, African-Americans in 2017 made up three percent of the population but accounted for sixty-seven percent of the stops, according to the ACLU. The aforementioned data is quintessential anti-blackness in Philadelphia, which is today, was yesterday, and will likely be tomorrow, tolerated by a majority of those in power.
Both Mr. Ross and his superior, Mayor Jim Kenney, are quick to tout the decline in quantity of pedestrian stops. But neither are keen to discuss the quality, which is what was at the core of Mr. Kenney’s campaign promise to end stop-and-frisk.
Mr. Kenney’s sentiment in 2015 was that Black men are stopped quite often simply because they’re black and that’s unfair. Three years later, the racial disparities are as stark as ever, and yet neither he nor Mr. Ross will mention it without a prompt.
The suggestion that the PPD holds a zero-tolerance approach to racist policing is bullshit. It was only two years ago that Philadelphia was profiled by Newsweek as being emblematic of the nation’s stop-and-frisk problem. And, it’s been almost a year since I sat across the table from Mr. Ross when he attempted, and failed, to explain why racial disparities exist in marijuana arrests.
So, what explains the lack of widespread and visible outrage from African-Americans towards the City’s top cop? To me, it appears to be a mixture of indifference and black privilege.
In other words, some people in the community just don’t give a fuck, while others care deeply but hesitate to criticize a black leader too harshly and publicly; some black leaders rely on this assumed hesitance.
African-Americans who pause before offering deserved critique of black leaders hold a dated idea of solidarity and they fear that too much condemnation may spark a firing, with the replacement being a non-black person. It’s a perversion of affirmative-action.
Mr. Ross may not need to be fired but he surely needs to be challenged, especially when he’s wrong and when his words are incongruous to real-life. If he’s going to continue to assert his commitment to equitable policing, then communities must be rapidly made aware as to the measurable strives being made to mitigate racial disparities in pedestrian stops and arrests. Otherwise, that commitment is just bullshit.
Thanks for reading! Until next time, I’m Flood the Drummer® and I’m Drumming for Justice!™
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