The discussion about the recent nationally televised beating inflicted by Maplewood and St. Louis police officers is a painful reminder to black people that the general white public is no more likely to see the injustice of the force used to subdue Edmon Burns than they are to feel apologetic for slavery. It is also a reminder of the pressing need to free young black men from the criminal justice system.
The first step is to free them from chronic and systemic unemployment. For many, not having a decent job is a ticket to jail for inability to pay child support. For others, it is a reason to make a living by selling drugs. Both situations provide excuses for the authorities to justify cops maiming and murdering.
Police repression is only a symptom of the deeper malignancy of economic disparity, which devalues black life. When Martin Luther King tried to quell a heated audience in Watts in the midst of the 1965 race riot that was ignited (like most riots) by police brutality, he heard a simple solution from a man who yelled this through the crowd:
“All we want is jobs. We get jobs, we don’t bother nobody. We don’t get no jobs, we’ll tear up Los Angeles, period.”
Eric E. Vickers
St. Louis