“Qualified Immunity”, A Wall Of Protection Around White Supremacy…

How do Millions of peo­ple rise up in oppo­si­tion to a sin­gle event, demon­strate against the sta­tus quo for weeks on end, and a polit­i­cal par­ty turn its back on that kind of move­ment?
You have to ask the Republican Party.
That, of course, is the Republican par­ty of Mitch McConnell, Tom Cotton, Donald Trump, and oth­ers.
It is a white suprema­cist polit­i­cal par­ty, that is con­trolled at the top by a dem­a­gog­ic nar­cis­sist who is com­plete­ly devoid of morals.
The so-called [Justice Bill ]that the Senate Republicans put for­ward in the Senate was an affront to the over forty mil­lion Black peo­ple who grieve and con­sole each oth­er every time a cop decides to sim­ply kill a black person.

The bill they put for­ward was blocked by Senate Democrats, and appro­pri­ate­ly so. It was not a bill that addressed police vio­lence in the coun­try it was a bill designed to blow smoke up the ass­es of the peo­ple demon­strat­ing against police vio­lence, while giv­ing a wing and a nod to killer cops that it is busi­ness as usu­al.
In respond­ing to why they blocked the bill, Senate Democrats argued; it does lit­tle to ensure legal account­abil­i­ty in cas­es of police mis­con­duct.
“This bill is not sal­vage­able and we need bipar­ti­san talks to get to a con­struc­tive start­ing point,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, Sens. Kamala Harris, and Cory Booker said”.
For their part, House Democrats have already craft­ed their own police reform bill, but it is easy to guess that Republicans will not sup­port it either, even though it has some degree of bipar­ti­san sup­port in that cham­ber.
Republicans gen­er­al­ly do not sup­port any leg­is­la­tion that holds police account­able.
Police mis­con­duct is man­i­fest­ed in the abuse and killing of African-Americans all across the coun­try. It is not a wan­ing phe­nom­e­non it is a grow­ing cri­sis. It is easy to see why the white-wing Republican par­ty will not sup­port any such leg­is­la­tion that holds it’s race sol­diers accountable.

At the heart of the Democrats case, is the fail­ure of the Republican bill to seri­ous­ly address the sem­i­nal issue that is at the heart of the world­wide protests against police vio­lence in America.
[Chief among the prob­lems Democrats cit­ed, is the lack of legal account­abil­i­ty demand­ed of police in the Republican bill. “In a moment call­ing for police account­abil­i­ty, the JUSTICE Act, your pro­posed answer to this cri­sis, does not con­tain any mech­a­nisms to hold law enforce­ment offi­cers account­able in court for their mis­con­duct,” Harris, Booker, and Schumer wrote in their Tuesday let­ter]. (Vox report­ed)
That sum­ma­tion goes to the heart of the issue, their pres­i­dent does not want any account­abil­i­ty for vio­lent racist police action. Making Senator Tim Scott the face of the bill was not about to impress any­one of worth, cer­tain­ly not in the black com­mu­ni­ty.
To begin with, Tim Scott has zero cred­i­bil­i­ty with the vast major­i­ty of African-Americans liv­ing in the United States.
so hav­ing Scott spear­head the bill can only be con­strued to cre­ate a faux impres­sion to the black com­mu­ni­ty that if the bill was writ­ten by Scott it would be in the best inter­est of black peo­ple.
No one was fooled by that three-card monte.
Scott, a South Carolina US Senator, is the sole African-American on the Republican side of the aisle. In fact, there is not a sin­gle African-American on the Republican side in the US House of Representatives.
Yup, the white men have ful­ly con­sti­tut­ed where they are comfortable.

Let’s be clear, Republicans do not give a s**t about what hap­pens to black peo­ple, for­mer President GW Bush was report­ed­ly deeply hurt when Kanye West accused him of not car­ing about Black People.
Regardless of how one felt about GW Bush at the time, or may still feel today, there is no deny­ing that there is absolute­ly no com­par­i­son between George W Bush and the occu­pant of the White House today.
In fact, this Republican Party would not sup­port President Bush if he was run­ning for office today, that is how far to the right this cult of white racists have lurched to the right under the lead­er­ship of their white suprema­cist pres­i­dent.
The real­i­ty of this fight, is that to some degree activists have been fight­ing the wrong fight.
Whether the call is to do away with police and replace it with some­thing else, or it is about defund­ing the police, the cen­tral issue as I see it is that all of those efforts will fail.
The cor­ner­stone of police vio­lence in America is white suprema­cy, bol­stered by qual­i­fied immunity.

The American sys­tem was built on the con­cept of white suprema­cy regard­less of what’s in the Constitution or the Bill of Rights. Those con­cepts enshrined in both were meant for white peo­ple and so every insti­tu­tion of gov­ern­ment at all lev­els was designed around the con­cept of white supe­ri­or­i­ty and white priv­i­lege, so too has the pri­vate sec­tor con­fig­ured its own poli­cies.
At the top of the sys­tem of white suprema­cy sits the United States Supreme Court. The court has been on the wrong side of his­to­ry on pret­ty much all major issues that sig­nif­i­cant­ly affect blacks from the infa­mous Dredd Scott deci­sion to the present, and maybe even fur­ther back.
It is for those rea­sons that no one in the black com­mu­ni­ty should be sur­prised that the court, in typ­i­cal­ly cow­ard­ly fash­ion, has refused to revis­it the sem­i­nal issue of (Qualified immu­ni­ty).
This is the very [doc­trine it cre­at­ed] that has since its cre­ation, allowed police to mur­der well over a thou­sand peo­ple each year, thou­sands more maimed and seri­ous­ly dis­fig­ured, while the offi­cers who com­mit these acts that are tan­ta­mount to war crimes, are shield­ed from pros­e­cu­tion by the supreme court.
This is more of an affront, par­tic­u­lar­ly at a time when the streets are filled with pro­test­ers and all across the globe peo­ple are ris­ing up against American racism.

Agreeing to remove the pro­tec­tive shield of qual­i­fied immu­ni­ty from police would be the begin­ning of the end of the process of white suprema­cy.
If the police who oppress and keep peo­ple of col­or in check as a means of main­tain­ing white suprema­cy are not pro­tect­ed from immu­ni­ty, white suprema­cy begins to crum­ble.
Qualified immu­ni­ty was nev­er about pro­tect­ing cops from being sued into pover­ty. That lev­el of immu­ni­ty breeds impuni­ty, and it should not have been afford­ed in the first place. Police offi­cers are giv­en the pow­er to take life, they should be held to the strictest stan­dards of account­abil­i­ty.
Shielding cops from account­abil­i­ty was always about the lack of respect that this nation has for black life. The fight ought to be aimed at the very legit­i­ma­cy of qual­i­fied immu­ni­ty.
The bat­tle lines must be drawn around can­di­dates who are run­ning for office and their stat­ed deter­mi­na­tion to ensure that this igno­ble stan­dard is torn down.
Yes, it is impor­tant to tear down stat­ues of oppres­sion and dis­crim­i­na­tion, but prob­a­bly more impor­tant is the need to tear down the wall that pro­tects the race soldiers.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer police Detective cor­po­ral, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer,
he is a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog chatt​-​a​-box​.com. 
He’s also a con­trib­u­tor to sev­er­al web­sites.
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