Why Are Only Black People Arrested in America?

An incident in Minnesota where a black man died as the result of inappropriate force from a white police officer has ignited protests which have turned into riots. Large-scale protests and riots in America have repeatedly been triggered by violent police actions against black people and the situation is unpredictable.

Arson and Looting

The incident that occurred in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on May 25, which was partially filmed by passersby and spread across social media, is attracting attention across America along with those shocking images. The video clearly shows a white policeman, hands thrust into his pockets, pressing his knee into the neck of an unresisting black man on a road, ignoring the man’s pleas of “I can’t breathe” and continuing to exert force until the man loses consciousness. After he fainted, the man was rushed to a hospital in an ambulance but he died.

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey immediately denounced the four police officers involved and took the unusual measure of firing them immediately. But the firings did not quell the rage of residents – black residents in particular. In the days that followed, protess spread across the city and some of them turned violent, leading to arson and the looting of shopping centers. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz deployed the National Guard on May 28.

The incident has quickly developed into a debate that is consuming the whole country. Former Vice President Joe Biden, who is the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, said, “George Floyd deserved better and his family deserves justice,” and called for a thorough FBI investigation. According to the press, President Donald Trump also directed the Department of Justice and the FBI to investigate immediately. Black activists like the Rev. Jesse Jackson demanded the arrest of the dismissed officers.

The Majority of COVID-19- Related Arrestees Are Black

It’s not just Minnesota. In many cities across America, residents were ordered to maintain social distancing when venturing outside to prevent a spread in infections of the novel coronavirus, and cases followed where citizens were arrested and detained for violating the orders of police officers on patrol. But it turns out that almost all of those who caught the eyes of police were minorities including black people, which was scandalous.

For example, 40 people were arrested in the Brooklyn borough of New York City between March 17 and May 4, but of these, 35 were black, four were Hispanic and one was white. The Washington Post reports that in the same city, police officers passed out masks in parks frequented by white people and gently admonished them to be mindful of infection, while in areas with high minority populations, there were numerous instances of lawbreaking pedestrians being roughly pushed to the ground and arrested.

The Minneapolis incident brings to mind an incident from six years ago in the Staten Island borough of New York. Then, as now, a video circulated of a white policeman pushing a black man to the ground and wrapping his arms around his neck from behind. After pleading “I can’t breathe,” the man fainted, was taken to the hospital and died of a heart attack. The policeman was not indicted, provoking large-scale protests.

The Police Officer’s Dilemma

Why are only black people arrested and subjected to illegal violence by the police? A team led by the University of Colorado’s Joshua Correll conducted a series of experiments using a video shooting game that made the psychological roots of the problem clear.

In the experiments, white and black people carrying guns appeared randomly as targets along with white and black people carrying smartphones and soda cans, etc. Players were told to identify and shoot the targets carrying guns as quickly as they could.

Players on average reacted more quickly to black people carrying guns, and shot them more often. Many players shot black people without guns and overlooked white people with them. Furthermore, when the same experiment was conducted with active duty police officers, accidental shootings were comparatively rare, but observers noticed a similar trend in race-based reaction.

Correll’s team claimed that the different reactions based on the target’s race were grounded in a bias many police officers have toward black people – that they are criminals – and called it “the police officer’s dilemma.”

I’ve Also Had a Gun Pointed at Me

In fact, I have also experienced the prejudice felt by white police against black people. In 2005, I was in New Orleans reporting on the flood damage caused by Hurricane Katrina and being driven in a taxi by a black man. When we got lost, two white police officers drew near holding rifles and suddenly pointed them at us, angrily shouting, “Put your hands up!” It had been a tense period, during which there had been considerable looting, and the officers’ eyes were bloodshot.

But while the cars in front of us were stopped by the same police officers, as far as I could see from behind them, they weren’t held at gunpoint. When I glanced inside as they turned around and passed us, the passengers were white. At the time, I thought there was strong prejudice not just against black people but against all people of color. In fact, a Japanese journalist there at the time had his car stopped, then was dragged out and beaten so severely he suffered broken bones.

Is Trump’s Behavior an Influence?

Some claim that Trump’s words and deeds – normalizing racism, encouraging prejudice – along with his deep-rooted racial prejudice, are influential in promoting white police violence against black people again. Trump has calmly said things like “migrants from Latin America are all criminals,” and just a few days ago, he created controversy after making remarks to a female Chinese-American reporter that could be considered racist.

After a black male jogger was shot by a white father and son in Georgia this February, Atlanta Mayor Keisha Bottoms fiercely denounced the president. “With the rhetoric that we hear coming out of the White House, in so many ways, I think many who are prone to being racist are given permission to do it in an overt way that we otherwise would not see in 2020.” The father in the case was a former policeman.

In the past, riots and large-scale demonstrations in America have occurred numerous times due to violence against black people by white police officers, such as the 1992 Los Angeles riots. I visited Los Angeles a few weeks after the riots, and I remember seeing what looked like burned-out ruins spread before me and being surprised by the magnitude of the energy stoked by racism.

It’s been almost 30 years since then. It feels like American society hasn’t changed at all.