The federal report on Ferguson’s gleefully racist police department and court system, and the “hey-this-is-just-business-as-usual” reaction from many area officials, confirmed that St. Louis, like the United States, is divided among people who say that the entire system is soaked through with institutional racism, and others who think that black people are social and moral failures, lacking both self-control and personal responsibility.
It was still shocking to see the argument codified in the U.S. Department of Justice’s investigative report on the Ferguson Police Department, right there on Page 5:
“City officials have frequently asserted that the harsh and disparate results of Ferguson’s law enforcement system do not indicate problems with police or court practices, but instead reflect a pervasive lack of ‘personal responsibility’ among ‘certain segments’ of the community. … The City’s personal-responsibility refrain is telling: it reflects many of the same racial stereotypes found in the emails between police and court supervisors.”
Like the email from Ferguson Police Captain Rick Henke, who has since resigned, saying CrimeStoppers should give $5,000 to any black woman having an abortion for helping in crime prevention.
There are lots of Captain Henkes out there in just about every police department in the United States. These white, often working- and lower-middle-class officers (and their police and political supervisors) have internalized the idea that they’re protecting the rest of us from out-of-control criminals. And while most of those criminals are black, they claim, there’s no racial problem in their department. Rather, they say, the problem is lack of personal responsibility and self-control among “certain segments” of the community.
That attitude is the backbone of how much of white America, and all of white conservative America, reacted to the report. Several hosts on Fox News said the Ferguson protests were based on “the lie” of “Hands up, don’t shoot!” since the report concludes that Mike Brown did not have his hands up, and no charges were brought against Darren Wilson. The conservative National Review wrote that the report is not about racism, but the evils of government.
None of this is new, and none of this is limited to Ferguson. There are 90 municipalities and around 60 police departments in St. Louis County. How would any of them come out in a similar DOJ probe? How well would any police force in the entire metro area, Missouri and Illinois, come out? We all know the answer.
On July 5, 2005, Kirkwood Police Officer Bill McEntee was gunned down by Kevin Johnson. A Fox 2 cameraman and I spent the day in Kirkwood’s Meacham Park neighborhood. All of the people we interviewed claimed Officer McEntee had a “bad reputation” in the neighborhood. We also found a lot of tension between residents and Kirkwood Police and the city government in general.
We then went to Kirkwood City Hall and interviewed Mayor Mike Swoboda, a genial, white-haired man with the disposition of a cheerful high school teacher. Swoboda denied Kirkwood had any racial problems and blamed any tension on “a few individuals.”
On our way out, the cameraman turned to me and said, “He doesn’t have any idea, does he? Wow.”
I just shook my head.
Two-and-a-half years later, on February 7, 2008, a disturbed black man from Kirkwood, Cookie Thornton – who had complained about problems with city government and the “plantation mentality” in Kirkwood – walked into the Kirkwood City Council chambers with a gun, killing five people and wounding two others. Mayor Swoboda was shot twice in the head. He lived another seven months, dying in September, 2008.
Mike Swoboda was a good man. Like much of St. Louis before and since, he was a decent man who did not conceive that institutional racism was a problem. In his mind, it all came down to individuals. People far less decent than Swoboda are now using the “personal responsibility” dodge to racist effect.
If there is any one looming conclusion from the Ferguson report, it is that this is an American horror story, played out in city and county and state governments and police departments across this country, where black people are the enemy.
These are not the bug-eyed racist goons of the Alabama State Police on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in 1965. Their racial animosity is nuanced and subtle. Often race is never even mentioned. After all, this is no longer about race. It’s not even about state’s rights. Now it’s about “personal responsibility.”
Charles Jaco is a journalist, novelist and author who has worked for NBC News, CNN, Fox 2, KMOX and KTRS.
