There Are No Racists---Only Racist Behaviour

I suspect that a lot of the rioting going on in the USA has just as much to do with the way the COVID-19 pandemic has affected people of colour as it does with police violence. But having said that, the "triggering" event was the death of George Floyd. 

An brief excerpt from a longer Washington Post video.

Used under the "Fair Dealing" Copyright provision. 

I want to share with readers some of the ideas that flow through my consciousness when I hear about this news story. Primarily, I'm talking about how the ten years of university study I put into getting a Master's degree plus the decades I've spent training under a wide variety of spiritual teachers---Buddhist, Daoist, and, Roman Catholic---have influenced my reactions. 

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The first point I'd like to raise is that almost all the institutions in our nation are based on a flawed understanding of what it means to be a human being. Unfortunately, most people also believe in this system of thought---even though various ancient spiritual traditions, the dominant system of academic philosophy, and, modern science all agree that it is flat-out wrong. 

I'm talking about the idea that human beings exist as isolated, atomic individuals who have individual agency. That is to say, that people have a very high degree of freedom to make individual choices, they do so on the basis of a strong degree of objective understanding of the consequences, and, as a result others should make strong inferences about who other people "are" based on past behaviour. In short, we have "minds" or "souls" that don't change much and we freely choose what we will or will not do. 

In contrast, Buddhists believe in the idea of "anatta", or, "no self". This is the idea that if you go through a process of very disciplined self-analysis---ie: meditation---you will come to the inescapable conclusion that there is no "self". Instead, all you can observe are a series of notions that spring spontaneously into your awareness. These are things like "my knees hurt", "I wonder what is going to be served for lunch", and, "I'm over 60 years old. When are these goofy ideas going to stop dominating my mind?"

David Hume, who is one of the fathers of empiricism---the dominant school of modern philosophy which has had significant influence on science---came to almost exactly the same opinion as the Buddhists. It appears that he did so simply because he went through the same process as the monks and nuns did---he looked deeply within his own consciousness.

More recently, modern neuroscience did some experiments with unfortunate individuals who'd had their tremendously severe forms of epilepsy cured by having their corpus callosum cut. This is the "wiring main trunk" that connects the left and right sides of the brain. What happened after this surgery---other than curing absolutely horrific epilepsy---was that researchers found out that the two brain parts seemed to start to think for themselves. In effect, what happened was two individuals found themselves sharing the same body. 

After the right and left brain are separated, each hemisphere will have its own separate perception, concepts, and impulses to act. Having two "brains" in one body can create some interesting dilemmas. When one split-brain patient dressed himself, he sometimes pulled his pants up with one hand (that side of his brain wanted to get dressed) and down with the other (this side did not). He also reported to have grabbed his wife with his left hand and shaken her violently, at which point his right hand came to her aid and grabbed the aggressive left hand. However, such conflicts are very rare. If a conflict arises, one hemisphere usually overrides the other. (From the Wikipedia.)

In addition, modern psychology has found out that what we call memory isn't an accurate recording of past experience---like a video file on a computer. Instead, it's a recreation made from a very small amount of actual recorded information. To use a computer analogy, memory goes through a data compression routine that records the major points and which rebuilds the experience using people's imagination. This saves brain capacity from becoming clogged with useless information, but at the expense of creating a lot of very corrupted memories.

So what does this mean about human beings? It suggests that the experience of consciousness is to have momentary, fleeting instances of self-awareness as seemingly random thoughts jump into existence. The continuity that we feel as individuals only comes from our memory of the past---which is tremendously corrupted by the way we access it. Other than that, we have anticipation of the future, which everyone knows is very hard to predict. 

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Beyond the bare machinery of consciousness, another point that we need to understand is that we are also embedded in a social and physical context. Consider, if you will, the teaching of the ancient Celestial Master of Daoism. He taught in his book the Taipingjing that his followers should not be proud of their own ethical behaviour nor judgemental of the failings of others because each of us has been profoundly influenced by our upbringing. This includes not only our family, but also our cultural inheritance: religion, ideology, advertising, propaganda, etc.

Similarly, our psychological state can be dramatically influenced by our physical state. Consider the experience of becoming grumpy or irritable because we are hungry or are suffering from a low-grade headache.

 Two weeks into a low-carbohydrate diet, comedian Jess Fostekew got “hangry”.

“I had a terrible, terrible road rage incident,” she remembers. “The car behind me, which happened to be full of large men, bibbed me for not having gone through a light quickly enough.” After getting out of her car and challenging them to a fight, only to be greeted with laughter, she got back in her car and drove.

“I pulled over and I sobbed – rageful sobs – and then vowed to never ever give up carbs again.” (From the BBC website.)

Let's go one step further and consider the effect that certain drugs have on our consciousness. Consider the relative difference between alcohol and cannabis. I can remember many years ago hearing a police chief on the CBC make the observation about the difference between the two. He said that when people get drunk they often get belligerent, take stupid risks, and, get into fights. In contrast, folks who get high tend to mellow out and order a pizza.

Another thing to consider is the wide variety of different psychological states that govern us. Some people are manic, some people are depressive, some are both. In addition, something like 1% of the human race don't have any empathy for other people at all. (The best they can do is learn to mimic concern from others simply because it seems to make it easier to get what they want from life.) All of these tendencies---and a lot more---exist on a continuum where people manifest more or less of them, from barely noticeable to totally debilitating.

What these things say to me is that it is impossible to separate human decision-making from the environment we were raised in and the physiology we were born with. Moreover, modern biology says that these two things are interlinked. We get born with a certain type of genetic inheritance from out parents, and the way they get expressed comes from the experience that they lived through, the experiences our mother lived through when we were in her womb, and, the experiences we had when we were children and young adults. Which just means that the Celestial Master and modern genetics are in agreement---we shouldn't be proud of the good we do nor judge others harshly for the bad they do. We are all the products of our environment.

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I'll admit that this is an odd bit of an opinion piece. But I do think that unless we discard our ridiculous ideas about human psychology it is impossible to really come to terms with some pretty deep problems in our society. If you find this perspective useful, consider subscribing to the blog. Even a dollar a month makes a difference. It's easy to do through Patreon or Pay Pal.

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What has this got to do with George Floyd's death? Not much with George Floyd, but a lot more with Derek Chauvin---the man who killed him. Common sense and the legal system would tell us that the problem is that a single human being freely chose to put his knee on the neck of another man and choked the life out of him over a 8 minute and 46 second period. But ancient spiritual wisdom, modern philosophy, and, science would say that Floyd died because a complex web of biological imperatives and social structures conditioned Chauvin to kill him, then placed him into a situation where he had the means and opportunity to do so.    

Derek Chauvin. Mug shot, public domain image.

If this sounds like I have some sympathy for Chauvin, it's true that I do. He's a human being and I have sympathy for all of us. But he's still alive and Floyd isn't. And there is a basic competency issue that would suggest that everyone knows you shouldn't kneel on the neck of another human being---especially for 8 minutes and 46 seconds.

But in his defense, let's think about some complexities. First of all, the majority of police officers in the US have limited education. According to a 2014 MSNBC News Report:

---according to a 2003 Bureau of Justice Statistics study, 83% of all U.S. police departments require a high school diploma, but only 8% require a 4-year college degree. But another study, by 2010 Police Quarterly, revealed that officers with some college education are less likely to resort to force (56% of the time) than those who have never attended college (68% of the time).

And one very well-educated NYPD employee talked about a major barrier to entry into the police force - the sheer amount of time it takes to get there. “From the day you take the test, to the day you get into Academy, the average time is about 3.5 years. Very, very few [educated] people are willing to put their career on hold for 3-4 years after graduation.”

Once they get into the academy, according to a Vox Media analysis of a 2006 Department of Justice Report most of the time is generally spent on physical fitness, self-defense, and, fire arms training.

That's right, only 213 hrs is spent training police officers, or, about five and one half weeks. Of that, 28% of the time is spent on fire arms, 24% on self-defense, and, 22% on fitness. I suspect that giving people only 5.5 weeks training is pretty low for people who carry weapons, and, are expected to use them on the citizenry based on a quick assessment of a given situation. 

Let's give some thought to how these things break down. 

I'm not about to suggest that a higher education is for everyone. But I am concerned about taking young men with only a high school education and not much life experience directly into a job that requires a great deal of self-confidence, calm rationality, and, a broad understanding about how the world operates. Of course not every new recruit is young, and after a few years the ones that are become older. But once you are a police officer you have entered a way of life that tends to define who you are. That's why there is this thing called "the blue wall of silence". If a young person comes into this subculture without much experience in the broader world, I suspect that it is very easy to "go along" with job's existing internal culture and stop identifying with the broader society. (Bringing in recruits with a broader set of life experiences was one of the suggestions that the Iacobucci Report made in response to the Sammy Yatin killing in Toronto.)

As for the training that new recruits go through, I suspect that most readers would agree that there should be a bare minimum of firearms training that people need to receive before the state will issue them a gun. I suppose 60 hours might be OK at least for getting safe use out of the way. (That's more than I had to take to get my license to purchase a firearm---but that was forty years ago.) But it is important to realize how incredibly rare it is for a police officer to have to draw and use their gun. 83% of  American citizen believe that the typical police officer has had to fire their weapon at least once in their career. The actual fact is that only 27% of officers say that they have ever had to fire their gun (and don't forget that this includes having to use the weapon to kill vicious dogs and euthanize animals struck by cars). Let that number sink in---over a 20 year career (generally how long you have to work to get a pension), almost three in four people never fire their guns. If this is the case, should an astounding 28% of the training go into firearms?

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I have some understanding of self-defense issues because I've seriously studied martial arts for something like 40 years, have taken courses in non-violent crisis intervention, and, had to intervene in confrontations as part of my work life. I can tell you that 51 hours of self-defense training is not enough to really do anything except teach people the absolute rudiments. 

And the biggest part of self-defense isn't actually "the moves", it's more a question of more theoretical things, like situational awareness, posture, reading another person's body language, the cultural context, etc. It also involves learning to control your fear and understanding the importance of objective analysis of a situation's real risk. Please understand this last point. If someone is prepared for everything, it actually means that they are prepared for nothing at all. That's because part of learning to protect yourself is learning the odds and working within that framework. 

Here's an example of a training video used by one of the larger consulting companies, Calibre Press. 

There is an argument put forward by some academics is that these sorts of videos create the impression among law enforcement officers that their job is tremendously dangerous. The problem is that this simply isn't true. 

If you add up the jobs with the most fatalities, police comes in at 18th. Take a look at what the really dangerous jobs are: 

1. Logger, 140 fatal injuries/100,000 (I have never cut trees as a job, but growing up on a farm I was involved as a child---yeah, it's scary dangerous cutting down trees!)
2. Fisherman, 86 fatal injuries/100,000
3. Aircraft pilot, 56/100,000 (there aren't that many airline crashes---but this includes people who fly things like bush planes too.)
4. Roofer, 48/100,000 (I did work a season as a chimney sweep---roofs are dangerous.)
5. Garbage truck drivers, 34/100,000---mostly being hit by cars while picking up garbage cans.
6. Structural Iron workers, 25/100,000
7. Traveling sales people/ truck drivers, 25/100,000---mostly due to traffic accidents.
8. Farmers 23/100,000. Yup, been there done that, lots of crazy machines to kill you.
9. Five other jobs until you get to number 14. 

Police officers according to this analysis come in as the 14th most dangerous, at 15 fatal injuries/100,000. And of this less than half are caused by "intentional shooting". Unfortunately, the USA Today article doesn't break this number down to account for suicide---which is tremendously common with police officers. According to this study, it accounts for 17 fatalities per 100,000. The average for the general population is 13 per 100,000. This means I don't know if those extra 4 suicides should be subtracted from "intentional shooting" deaths, or added to them. Either way, it appears that more deaths come from something pretty mundane---traffic accidents---than being shot by malefactors. 

What this suggests to me is that people who work for police departments in the USA are being taught to be irrationally afraid of the people that they are supposed to "serve and protect". If you go to work with the paranoid idea that you are surrounded by a disproportionately large number of people who are out to kill you, it is hardly surprising if you get a little "trigger happy". And spread that attitude far enough, and you are going to find examples where people go too far---like Derek Chauvin.

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There is another way of doing policing, one that stems from the beginnings of the job in the 19th century. In 1929 Sir Robert Peel founded the modern London police force and based on a set of very important principles.

Here's a statement of them from the Ottawa Police Force website. 

1. The basic mission for which the police exist is to prevent crime and disorder.
2. The ability of the police to perform their duties is dependent upon public approval of police actions.
3. Police must secure the willing cooperation of the public in voluntary observance of the law to be able to secure and maintain the respect of the public.
4. The degree of cooperation of the public that can be secured diminishes proportionately to the necessity of the use of physical force.
5. Police seek and preserve public favor not by catering to the public opinion but by constantly demonstrating absolute impartial service to the law.
6. Police use physical force to the extent necessary to secure observance of the law or to restore order only when the exercise of persuasion, advice and warning is found to be insufficient.
7. Police, at all times, should maintain a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and the public are the police; the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence.
8. Police should always direct their action strictly towards their functions and never appear to usurp the powers of the judiciary.
9. The test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder, not the visible evidence of police action in dealing with it.

I would argue that in the USA (maybe Canada too for that matter---but at least we pay lip service to Peel's principles) the police don't pay enough attention when it comes to numbers 2 through 9---especially with regard to the black community. This isn't because some of the police force have freely chosen to become racist and kill black people at the slightest excuse. Instead, I'd suggest that police officers are just like all the rest of us---we are the products of biological and social factors that push us towards certain types of behaviours. And because our institutions have no understanding of this fact, we have stumbled into a situation where we are often selecting for and training police to be fearful (or indifferent), and this leads to situations like the one where George Floyd got killed. 

This is why I've titled this Op Ed There Are No Racists---Only Racist Behaviour. I don't think it helps us understand the problem by saying that individual police officers are "racist". Instead, I think it's important to understand exactly what is going on in the process of selecting and training them. That's the real culprit in the situation where a police officer would crush a man's neck with his knee for 8 minutes and 46 seconds, not officer Derek Chauvin. 

In other words, it's the system, not the person.

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Furthermore I say unto you, we have to deal with the Climate Emergency!