A Colony in a Nation

by Chris Hayes

American criminal justice isn’t one system with massive racial disparities but two distinct regimes. One (the Nation) is the kind of policing regime you expect in a democracy; the other (the Colony) is the kind you expect in an occupied land.

White fear is both a social fact and something burned into our individual neural pathways. In laboratory studies white people rate children of all races equally “innocent” until about age ten, when the innocence of black children suddenly fades, while that of white children endures.

Back in 1982, when Kelling and Wilson wrote their famous article, they didn’t even pretend to claim that enforcing order would lead to reductions in crime. Their argument was about the sentiment of the community (making residents “feel” safer).

Some part of me believes, not intellectually but in my skin, that I’m going to have to give something up. Maybe I’ll have to give a lot up. Maybe the size of the pie is fixed. Maybe equality will cost me something. If it’s something material, I don’t mind. I can pay higher taxes, if that’s what it takes. But that’s not what I mean. Maybe true equality would fundamentally alter my way of life, my lived experience of the world in every waking moment.

if there’s one thing I’ve come to believe, it is that much of the cause of our current state of affairs lies in our tasking police with preserving order rather than with ensuring safety.