Yes, that Includes Your Uncle

By Mack Miller

“When talking about police brutality and violence we’re talking about the system, not people like your uncle or someone you know.” It’s time to talk about your uncle. Discussing state sanctioned systematic racist violence, the age-old liberal argument is usually something like “hate the system but not the people involved.” They’ll say “hate the war but not the troops” and “hate the system but not the cops.” Is it within a liberal person’s self interest to protect individuals’ complicity in these systems of violence and perpetuation of capitalism? I am wondering why justified anger and fury towards these systems and towards the complicit individuals has to be mutually exclusive.

It doesn’t.

Police brutality has become a defining topic within this generation. After catching a new incredible wind from the Black Lives Matter movement, the conversation has extended from police brutality to the entire connected system of state violence, the prison industrial complex, the military industrial complex, systematic racialized poverty and so much more, and is bringing it more and more into the mainstream media and discourse everyday. The concept of police brutality and systematic racism and violence is no longer regarded as a conspiracy theory but has become a well acquainted and regarded understanding of reality in American society. However, with the introduction of system-wide critiques comes capitalist and liberal cooptation and de-escalation. When critiques of the system catch momentum there’s always someone hoping to attach an asterisk to the end to ensure agents of violence are not held accountable for their actions.

For example, an article by Rare.us starts off with, “Perhaps the most understandably difficult point to communicate when talking about criminal justice reform is that it’s not about disliking police, and especially not about disliking individual police officers.” If we want to be free from state sanctioned violence we must start pointing fingers both at the laws that give reason and protection for the violence as well as the individuals who carry the violence out, the agents of this violence. It very much is about disliking (and so much more) individual police officers… and yes, that includes your uncle.

At the end of wars and genocides, the freedom fighters who deal with judgement and justice do not decide that people involved in the system that allowed the war and genocide to manifest are free to go and that instead we must reflect on how it was exclusively the system that brought on these atrocities. War criminals are held accountable for their actions at all levels of perpetration. This must be done with police. Like the war and genocide throughout history and the world, people are being systematically jailed and murdered in America. To ignore the violence of complicity by individual police officers is to undermine the stark reality of the violence taking place by the hands of the police system.

To blame individual cops for their complicity and to blame the system do not have to be mutually exclusive. For a successful overturn of the violent system to take place we must address and punish those complicit in the organization that has effectively murdered thousands of people with racial and economic disproportions.

Like stated earlier, we are talking about your uncle. We are talking about every person that is complicit in enabling white supremacy and and police brutality. We are talking about every barrier they are willing to use as an excuse to not doing something about the systematic death and torture of people of color and working class people in America.

The Washington Post published an article in January of 2016 titled “The one thing that will get a cop fired” that discussed the limitations of police accountability and the ramifications. A cop was fired for not committing an act of abuse of power. Jay Park, a police officer in Athens, Georgia, was fired for not illegally arresting an intoxicated student. This story is one of many where cops are fired for not following orders of illegal intent and action. Not only does this indicate that cops are not doing things to counteract police violence en masse but that there are barriers put in place to prevent any form of internal counter-organizing. However, the Bureau of Labor states that being a police officer is a position with one of the highest union density rates in the country. With an organized workforce within the police department, it is possible to do anti-brutality organizing. These barriers are not an excuse to attempt to prevent murder and lifelong systematic incarceration.

We must hold every cop accountable as agents of state violence until every cop has turned against the system and disrupted it into a placated and immobilized machine. There is no good cop that is not actively pursuing everything in their power to stop police brutality.

“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”