Cop Caught on Camera Beating Special Education Student

Was the Black police officer color aroused
to attack the Black student?

Hat Tip to a blog called Child Protective Services: A System Out of Control, and Huffington Post.

CPS: A System Out of Control blog says,

A south suburban Chicago police officer was caught on a security camera beating up a [Black] high school special education student, CBS2 reports.

Marshawn Pitts, 15, was walking down his school hallway when he says a Dolton, Ill. police officer went from berating him for his untucked shirt to slamming him to the ground and beating him.

Many people would assume that since the police officer and the student are both Black, therefore skin color played no role in this police officers apparently unprovoked assault on a student, in which a "face-down takedown" was used, even though it has been banned in a third of the US states because it presents an unacceptable risk of suffocation.

How could this attack have been aroused by skin color if both the attacker and the attacked are Black. Ask yourself whether this Black police officer would have treated a white student in the same way? The fact is that there is immensely more acceptance in our society for police violence against Blacks than for police violence against whites, regardless of the skin color of the police officer. It's the skin color of the victim that determines how the calculus of officer behavior and public outrage will play out.

If the police officer believes he can beat up a student with no professional, financial or personal repercussions, then the lack of a deterrent makes it more likely that a police officer, regardless of skin color, will attack a Black student.

This is why "racism" ideology so often takes us into an analytical dead end. We assume, without any evidence, that people of the same skin color do not calculate the skin color of the victims into their ideation, emotions and behavior. But, when you look at this more from an economic perspective the analysis becomes more clear. By way of analogy, if the supermarket announces that Coca Cola will be sold for half price on Sunday, then both Black and white customers will swarm the store. Their behavior is not based on their skin color, but instead is based on the price of Coca Cola.

Likewise, if Black police officers are sent to break up a melee at a Black high school and white police officers are sent to a white school, there is a higher likelihood that physical confrontations and charges against students will result at the Black school, because the economic and professional consequences of beating up Black students is "cheaper" than at the white school. And there is also a white societal approval that comes to officers, regardless of skin color, when officers beat, arrest and charge Blacks.

So, that answers the question of whether a Black officer can have color-aroused ideation, emotion and behavior aroused by the perception of the (Black) skin color of a suspect. Since the price of beating a Black suspect is predictably much less, and since the societal and police departmental approbation is predictably greater, therefore even Black police beat Black arrestees more than they would white arrestees.

A Black officer who tried to use his badge as a license to beat white people up would quickly discover that the license is not nearly as broad as that. As the Dred Scott ante-belum and pro-slavery US Supreme Court decision said, "A Black man has no rights which a white man is bound to respect." Obviously,the opposite has never, ever been true, that a white suspect has no rights that a Black officer is bound to respect. Anecdotally, how often have you heard or read or seen in a video that a white member of the public was savagely beaten by a Black police officer?

It's alright for any officer to beat Blacks, regardless of the officer's skin color. White and Black officers who beat white, particularly middle class white suspects, are officers who must offer some credible reason for their behavior toward a white "collar". Meanwhile Dred Scott is still considered good law, in police vs. collar cases, in most USA police departments.