Recently, acting secretary of Homeland Security Chad Wolf said: “I do not think that we have a systemic racism problem with law enforcement officers across this country.” While he was actually claiming the old saw about a few ‘rotten apples’ giving the barrel a bad name, which flies in the face of most other police officers either excusing or ignoring the bad behavior, in a way I think he was right.
To say that there is systemic police brutality against African-American people is to ignore the fact that there is systemic police brutality against any group that threatens or does not kowtow to the white elite rulers of this country. First, the statement ignores other minorities such as Hispanics, Asians, and Middle Easterners. Second, it ignores other historic systemic examples, such as frequent excessive use of force perpetrated against non-violent drug users, homeless/vagrants (especially during the Great Depression), hippies and other anti-war protestors in the 60s, and various ethnic immigrant sub-cultures in New York, Chicago, and many other areas (as in prejudice against Italians, Catholics, Poles, et alia).
By far, however, it ignores the most egregious period of American history: The United States has had the bloodiest and most violent labor history of any industrial nation in the world. Police and National Guard troops were regularly called in to break strikes, disrupt peaceful unionized meetings, and otherwise punish labor leaders from trying to break the stranglehold of the rich corporate owners of the past, the “Robber Barons” who ran America openly, and even now exert the same power, albeit a little less blatantly.
Therefore, the police have always been used as a force to support the very wealthy and powerful, generally through the use of their politician puppets, against the people who actually pay their salaries through taxes, but have no direct voice in how those forces are utilized.
Donmaker's Blog 