Though history books may say otherwise, policing in the United States has its roots in the slave patrols in the South. The institution of policing, and the larger justice system, must reconcile its past in order to evolve away from its racist roots.
Though history books may say otherwise, policing in the United States has its roots in the slave patrols in the South. The institution of policing, and the larger justice system, must reconcile its past in order to evolve away from its racist roots.
The first line: “Jim Crow Origins of Policing”
Police and law enforcement have existed ever since laws existed. We have millennia of history of policing before Jim Crow came into being. Jim Crow demonstrably is not the origin of policing.
Jim Crow is used as a descriptor of a specific kind of policing. You seem to read this in bad faith, and that’s making you misunderstand what it’s saying.
I’m with you. I expect something closer to literal accuracy before I take a statement seriously. It’s rather like being told that the phrase “defund the police” does not mean to actually defund the police. The fight against racism in policing is not helped with this type of purely metaphorical speech.
Counterpoint.
The article was clearly referring to American police, and pretending it was referring to the entire history of law enforcement is pedantic to the extreme.
Also, defund the police.