Black Lives Matter and Police Brutality: Systemic Racism Reform

Introduction

The death of George Floyd on May 25, 2020 shocked most Americans—but especially white Americans who believed that the battle for civil rights was long over and that Black people had won (Tamkin, 2020). This complacency was shattered, however, by the massive nationwide and then global response to Floyd's death, which underscored just how severe racial tensions in the United States remained. Despite decades of aggressive state and federal efforts to ensure that all Americans are afforded their Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment rights, scarcely a day goes by without headlines reporting yet another high-profile instance of police brutality against a minority member in the United States.

These issues have assumed even greater importance in light of the Black Lives Matter movement and the numerous concerns that this and similarly situated groups have identified as part of a larger systemic racism problem. The purpose of this paper is to review the relevant literature to provide background on this issue and explain why it is important. In addition, the paper presents a discussion of possible solutions, followed by recommendations for action by civic leaders and law enforcement organizations across the country. Finally, a summary of the research and key findings concerning solutions for addressing police brutality in the United States are presented in the conclusion.

The country was already reeling from the Covid-19 pandemic—and people were suffering from the unprecedented effects of a nationwide shutdown—when the gruesome images of a police officer kneeling on the neck of George Floyd on May 25, 2020 galvanized the nation's, and then the entire world's, attention. Like the images of the terrorist-flown jets crashing into the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, the news coverage of Floyd's death assumed center stage in the national consciousness despite the ongoing pandemic. As Harris (2020) recounts, "[Floyd's] murder was yet another recent murder of a Black person by a police officer in the United States, and historically, one of countless other murders of Black people committed by White people [and] his murder ignited protests and rioting in Minneapolis" (p. 383).

Background on the Issue

These protests were followed by dozens, and then hundreds, of additional demonstrations by citizens outraged by yet another Black death at the hands of law enforcement. Many observers questioned whether the outcome would have been dramatically different had Floyd been white. The initial responses to his death reflected the extent to which many people felt violated by the actions of the Minneapolis Police Department. As Harris (2020) points out, "Calls for justice and peace were made against a backdrop of buildings on fire, a police station being stormed and overtaken, stores being looted and chaos spreading from our supposedly peaceful Midwestern city to other parts of the country and even the world" (p. 384).

It is important to note, however, that Floyd's death was merely the fuse being lit on an already smoldering powder keg of racial tension (Crawford, 2018). When the initial response had played out and the Floyd incident—along with similar cases—was investigated in greater detail, calls for justice and for addressing police brutality and systemic racism began coming from a growing number of mainstream organizations, including the American Medical Association (AMA), which convened a special meeting of its House of Delegates to raise public awareness and formulate potential alternatives for moving forward.

The consensus that emerged from that special AMA meeting underscored the fact that systematic racism in the United States is the product of longstanding public and private sector institutional policies, as well as a lack of adequate training for law enforcement authorities. A press release from the AMA noted that it "recognized the detrimental public health consequences of violent law enforcement interactions in adopted policy addressing the need for policing reform [which] recognizes police brutality as a manifestation of structural racism" (AMA policy recognizes police brutality as product of structural racism, 2020, para. 4).

While the AMA is only one organization—albeit a large and influential one—the calls for action that resulted from its special meeting provide a valuable framework for evaluating current efforts and determining whether they are achieving their intended outcomes. As the research that follows will show, the numbers of police shootings of members of American minority groups have steadily escalated in recent years, and these trends have exacted a serious toll on the nation's race relations and social stability.

The AMA's calls for greater public education have helped focus attention on the severity of systematic racism in the United States and its harmful effects on minority populations in general and Black Americans in particular. According to the AMA, "Research shows that racially marginalized communities are disproportionally subjected to police force and racial profiling, and it underscores the correlation between violent policing and adverse health outcomes" (AMA policy, 2020, para. 7). This point is especially significant because it means that virtually all Black and brown Americans are adversely affected by police brutality, whether or not they are direct victims. As Panwala (2009) cautioned, "Excessive use of force by police officers undermines faith in the criminal justice system. Citizens expect those with badges and guns to follow the law as well as enforce it, but these two roles often come into conflict" (p. 640). Likewise, the AMA notes the widespread adverse mental and physical health effects on entire minority communities when police use excessive force: "The data make clear that police brutality—one manifestation of systemic racism—has significant public health consequences for impacted communities, particularly among the Black community" (AMA policy, 2020, para. 7).

The Importance of Police Brutality and Systemic Racism

Furthermore, besides eroding the fundamental trust in law enforcement that is essential to a nation of laws, police brutality and systemic racism also have a profoundly negative impact on minority communities in terms of mental and physical health (Lawson, 2013). The AMA adds that "the significant harms triggered by excessive police force include: unnecessary and costly injury; elevated stress and anxiety levels; increased rates of comorbidities like high blood pressure, diabetes, and asthma; and premature morbidity and death" (AMA policy, 2020, para. 8).

This is not to say that Black Americans are the only demographic group adversely affected by police shootings, but rather that they have been disproportionately impacted by these incidents. While there were nearly twice as many white deaths compared to Black deaths as a result of police shootings in the United States during the period from January 1, 2015 through July 14, 2020, the rate of deaths per one million people for Black Americans was nearly two-and-a-half times as great as for white Americans, and Hispanics were likewise disproportionately affected compared to their white counterparts (McCarthy, 2020).

In sum, Black and brown Americans have historically been disproportionately affected by police brutality, including the use of deadly force, but there is far more involved in sustaining systemic racism on a national level over decades. The mindset that fuels systemic racism is frequently overt: some people simply do not like others because they are different and are not reluctant to express these sentiments. In far too many other cases, however, systemic racism is reinforced by unconscious or unintended biases on the part of white Americans that shape individual perceptions of minority groups, especially African Americans and Hispanics (Dutcher, 2020).

More troubling still, these same unconscious or unintended biases can also operate at the institutional level, where they may be even more difficult to identify and more severe in their effects on minority groups. As Mathews (2020) explains, "Proponents of racial equality and anti-racism measures argue that public institutions lack a complete understanding of how social, racial, and economic disparities are experienced and the insidious impact of unbalanced power and resources" (p. 1). In other words, one of the main causes of systemic racism relates to the inability or unwillingness of white Americans to empathize with the challenges faced by minority members in securing their equitable rights under the U.S. Constitution.

Even purportedly gender- and race-neutral computer-based human resources algorithms used for public and private sector employee selection may be inadvertently skewed by errant programming, but the common factor in all such cases is the disproportionate manner in which these institutionalized practices adversely affect minority groups. As Mathews (2020) concludes, "The presence and effects of systemic racism are often hidden in race-neutral approaches to service delivery that fail to account for the differential experience of racial and marginalized groups" (p. 1).

Since these types of systemic racism are exceedingly difficult to detect, they may operate for years without notice of their real-world effects. This problem has been further compounded by a scarcity of research on how these unseen but powerful forces affect diversity programs and other initiatives intended to promote employment opportunities for minorities. Mathews (2020) notes that the current situation "is compounded with a lack of meaningful data on race and service delivery in public institutions that can mask or accurately capture their representation and utilization of programs and services" (p. 1).

The net impact of these institutionalized practices has been to impede attempts to address the root causes of systemic racism in American institutions, including law enforcement organizations (Mathews, 2020). Part of the problem appears to stem from the code of silence that permeates many police departments, combined with an organizational culture that minimizes the value of minority rights—and lives. One investigative reporter noted that "one police officer justified his hitting a suspect in the stomach when the suspect tried to run away as being necessary to reestablish authority. Another police officer is quoted as saying, '[i]f someone disses you, you take him in an alley and slap him. If it's known in the street you can be stepped on, you've got a problem'" (as cited in Panwala, 2009, p. 642).

For the vast majority of white Americans who have lived their entire lives without any undue altercations with law enforcement—and who have even relied on police first in times of distress—these types of actions may seem incomprehensible, but they represent the harsh daily realities facing a large percentage of American citizens. This form of systematic racism is far more difficult to address because changing people's minds is extraordinarily difficult to begin with, and it is virtually impossible when those individuals are already convinced they are right. Identifying possible solutions to police brutality and systemic racism therefore represents a challenging but timely and valuable enterprise.

Conclusion

Today, public administrators at all levels are confronted with a divisive social and political landscape that demands conciliatory and meaningful responses to the growing unrest over police brutality and systemic racism in the country's public and private sector institutions. The research consistently showed that police brutality has adverse mental and physical health effects on entire minority populations, whether or not individual members are direct victims. In addition, the research confirmed that the conventional response to this crisis—additional training for law enforcement authorities to help them identify their errors—remains important but insufficient on its own.