Here, I offer a brief communitarian solution to tackling the problem of police brutality. I speak partly from experience. Although I am a Korean immigrant, I had the unique opportunity to live in a neighborhood nicknamed as "Gang Land" before moving to a middle-class home not too long ago. When I came to Baylor, I remember there being a shooting near the campus. The following morning, there was a school-wide email begging caution and many students felt frightened. Where I came from, when there is a gunshot during the night, many simply shrug it off like it's nothing. But despite the neighborhood I was in, by some strange chance, my school zone was cut to include all economic classes. Across the street from where I was, the school zone was cut to include only the lower class. Some neighborhoods had houses that cost $2 million and some neighborhoods had two bedroom apartments you can rent for $600. Yes, the apartments were that crappy, despite their well-managed outward looks. Due to my situation, I have known friends from different economic and, racial backgrounds. By consequence I observed how different their family dynamics were (if any) and how differently each of them thought. I have further spent hours checking criminal records and noticed the flaws in the system. With that said, I can confidently claim that I have a good insight as to where each side of the debate is coming from.
The discourse on police brutality has increasingly been on the minds of the public. Many argue that the procedural injustice is not a problem in America. Many argue in opposition that the whole system is rigged against minorities, specifically African Americans. I have stated extremes of each sides, but either way, we see clearly biased arguments on both sides. We have plain deniers of police brutality despite clear video examples on one side, and those insultingly call African Americans who take a more laid-back and conservative approach to fixing the problem as "Uncle Tom" (used derogatorily). I even have heard one person say that Booker T. Washington encouraged Black people to "sit down and do nothing." I question that (white) person's interpretation of history. In the midst of the bias fueled by emotional zeal, many solutions offered are structurally infeasible and legally short-sighted, and often miss the crucial element that should be taken into account: human nature. Communitarianism is built upon assumptions of human nature, thus being more sensible and practical for this imperfect world.
The relevant communitarian assumptions of human nature are (1) human beings are political animals that congregate into communities, (2) human beings thrive both physically and psychologically in well-functioning communities, and (3) human vices are mitigated in close-knit communities. Modern understanding of psychology has proven these ancient principles; a wealth of happiness studies emphasize the importance of communities (if in doubt, simply Google).
I will now discuss the issue of procedural injustice and its contributing factors with these principles in mind.
(1) The American political system is prudently constructed to allow local residents to elect local representatives. Yet the number of engaged voters at a local level is insignificant. Oftentimes the topic of how the police should handle the problem are not on the ballot. As political animals (in the Aristotelian sense), we would do well to engage politically more often for to be political is to be communaly engaged. Activists and local Black Churches are able to mobilize politically against perceived systemic injustice locally if they choose to do so. However, many of these groups are largely disengaged from local politics.
Activists in particular have failed on this aspect. The prevailing rhetoric claims that "the system" is rigged. I have heard the following phrase all too often: "The whole damn system is fucked." The substance of this rhetoric is a grave mistake. As implied in the previous paragraph, American governance is divided into systems. Plural. Not all counties criminal lawyers are overworked, not all counties face accusations of procedural injustice, and not all counties have to deal with the complex structural and sociological issues giving rise to procedural injustice.
(2) Human psychology is wired to act in accordance with primal instincts. In this case, the relevant primal instinct I am talking about is overreaction to perceived threat. When a person is in perceived state of life-threatening danger, the person does not shoot once or strike once; the person will most likely overreact. When one perceives that one's life is in danger, it takes no small amount of willpower to resist. Knowing this fact, prejudiced shootings and violence will always happen regardless of how much progress we make unless we can replace the police force with robots. Knowing further the difficulty of conditioning the human mind, we can conclude that putting the burden of improvement solely on the police force is unrealistic and idealistic at best.
The burden of improvement should thus be shared by the police force and the American community as a whole. There is very little contention that the modern psyche is not healthy, especially among African American youth. President Obama himself said that African American youths are becoming increasingly without fathers, and that those without fathers are five times more likely to fall into poverty and commit crime. In the absence of a proper father figure, young African Americans look to the violent and misogynistic wisdom of Gangsta rappers and the likes. All the shootings and pimping glorified in those songs are deemed as "cool" by the youth.
I remember back in high school how a group black guys talked of girls. One guy asked, after hearing of a fight between a couple, "What happened with you and your bitch?" The other answered, "I smacked that bitch right on her bitch ass face." The group of guys laughed and high-fived the guy that hit his girlfriend. To them, this sort of behavior was acceptable to a point where it deserved a praise. What's more is that these guys were middle-class African Americans whose parents had more stable income than my family did at the time. They had all they needed to live their lives comfortably, but a life of crime appealed to them more. The experience I have revealed is but a small portion of what is going on. I also know a guy who imprudently posted on Facebook with a ski mask on captioned "time to work." I never saw him post on Facebook since, but this shows how a life of Tupac is glorified over Elon Musk. Indeed, African American males are much more likely to commit crimes than other individuals of different race nationwide. This harsh sociological fact is where some police officers' prejudice lies. Each violent encounter with a particular racial group would further strengthen the prejudice in return.
Of course, I am not saying that we should not hold minorities who grew up in harsh conditions and officers who formed their prejudice upon violent encounters morally culpable of their faulty actions. I know of youths grew up in a gangland ending up praying the rosary every day and police officers with PTSD never batching up a car search, proofs of how we make the decisions we make regardless of our conditions. What I am suggesting is that the family structure of African American communities must be strengthened so that the youth will turn out to be more disposed toward making moral decisions. Where there is no family structure, those other than the children's immediate family must become a family for them. Black churches that counteract "thug-life" culture have been found by research to reduce crime, and we have many out there. Yet more can be done by activists, religious or otherwise. Instead of wasting time with outpouring of emotional zeal over unclear low-res videos, perhaps they should set up after-school programs to keep children out of the streets and provide legitimate parental figures.
(3) It is common knowledge that, if we know a person well, we are more likely to act favorably toward that person. I myself have experienced that those who do not know me tend to show anger while discussing a difficult topic while those who know me well treated me with kindness despite our differences. However intemperate one may be, that same intemperance can be tempered while being with individuals one favors; human vices are mitigated in close-knit communities.
This train of thought can be said for the police force. If a police officer is from a community he is patrolling and is well-acquainted with its members, he will more likely to know a suspect from that particular area and be more lenient toward the suspect even if the suspect has committed a violent crime in the past. This form of policing, community policing, was what we had in the past, and is still loosely used in other countries. I still remember how I knew well the two police officers that patrolled my street when I lived in Korea. The modern form of policing is traced back to 1829 when London founded its Metropolitan Police Services.
But this theory of communal police force, however attractive it may sound, cannot be done in urban ganglands; it is a vision achieved only in small rural towns and stable upper-middle class suburbs. If an African American man from a crime-heavy African American neighborhood gets recruited, the gang controlling the area will most likely harass the recruit's family to a point of leaving, or, in the worst, outright murder the recruit while he's sleeping in his own home. It seems that a communal police force can only work within a relatively stable community. The solution to this element, then, must be traced back to the solution for the second element.
In conclusion, while pushing for reforms in the justice systems, minority communities, black communities more so, must push toward improving the culture their communities promote. The systems can only do so much; if there are more crimes committed by minorities, a system, however well-structured it may be, will inevitably convict minorities at a more frequent rate. Proponents of justice must, and I repeat must recognize that stable individuals make up a stable society. If individuals are morally uneducated and characteristically unbridled, no law will fix the instability that comes with it. Thus the restoration of family is crucial to solving any sociological problem for the family is where moral education starts. In a family, moral education is taught not out of philosophy books and nonsensical soundbites, but in observing the charity that can exist between human beings and how to practice that most precious disposition. The family ought to be the building block of any civil society. This fact has been understood by ancient philosophers long before modern psychology was formed; it is deplorable how little attention we give to the family nowadays.
