Enacted in the 1870s, Jim Crow laws enforced racial segregation – and inferior treatment – of Blacks in the South for nearly 100 years.
The laws included separate accommodations for schools and other public facilities as well as transportation, including the coaches of interstate trains and buses. Restrooms would also be segregated, as would restaurants, drinking fountains and the military.
The Supreme Court upheld these laws in 1896 in the infamous Plessy vs. Ferguson case, establishing the “separate but equal” doctrine in which the treatment of Blacks was never equal.
When opposition to the laws grew in the 1950s and 1960s, proponents of racial segregation routinely denounced federal interference in “states’ rights.”
They would use “states rights” as a justification for segregation until the Civil Rights Act passed Congress in 1964 and the Voting Rights Acts in 1965.
So disingenuous arguments intended to distract or mischaracterize have been used for a long time to oppose equal treatment of Blacks.
We would like to think that is not what we are seeing with Nassau County Republican officials promoting a “Blue Ribbon Campaign in Support of Law Enforcement.”
But the evidence seems to be pointing the other way.
The Blue Ribbon Campaign appears to be nothing more than a sequel to the All Lives Matter response to Black Lives Matter. Both seem intended to ignore if not deny the problems with policing in our country proved by videos shown online and on our televisions all too often.
“As the Nassau County Police Department and thousands of NYPD officers living on Long Island continue to battle anti-police sentiment coupled with calls to ‘defund the police,’ the Nassau County Legislature unveiled a new Blue Ribbon initiative to encourage homes and businesses to show their support for the women of law enforcement,” county Republicans said in a release.
Let’s be clear. Police across the country perform a difficult and sometimes dangerous job. No one fails to appreciate them when they do their jobs properly or go even beyond the call of duty. In those times, they richly deserve our praise.
But that’s not what Black Lives Matter supporters are talking about. They’re talking about when the police don’t perform their jobs properly. The widespread use of cellphone cameras is demonstrating that happens all too often to Black and brown people.
If Nassau Republican officials disagree, they should say so.
In the meantime, we are left with the troubling language of their press release and public statements.
Why, for instance, characterize concerns about police brutality as “anti-police sentiment?” Are they really the same thing? If so, that’s not saying much for the police.
The Republicans also criticize calls to “defund the police,” an imprecise term understood by most Americans to mean reforming policing.
Former Vice President Joe Biden, the Democratic presidential candidate, and the entire Democratic leadership in Congress have all rejected the term in calling for police reforms.
New York City did cut the police budget by $1 billion – out of the total $9 billion that it slashed – as part of its $88.1 billion budget due to revenues lost to the coronavirus.
But even that was less than what meets the eye. Most of the $1 billion in savings came from shifting the monitoring of illegal vending, homeless people on the streets and school safety away from the police. In other words, accounting tricks.
No such cuts are planned in Nassau County.
And are the brave members of the Nassau County Police Department and the thousands of NYPD officers living on Long Island really that sensitive to criticism of policing in the United States that they need us to comfort them?
Missing from the press release is any similar expression of concern for the treatment of Blacks by police in this country.
This might be explained, in at least in part, by the symbiotic relationship between police and Republicans in Nassau County.
Nassau County police have supported the Republican Party with campaign donations and crucial endorsements to residents concerned about crime for decades.
In return, Nassau Republican legislators have made county police among the best compensated public employees in the state. The legislators and other officials have also offered an implicit promise to give police officers who have behaved improperly the benefit of the doubt.
As we have pointed out before, 27 police unions from across New York state and Long Island endorsed Hempstead Town Supervisor Kate Murray for Nassau County district attorney in 2015 – even though Murray was a career politician who had never practiced criminal law and her opponent, Madeline Singas, was a career prosecutor and then acting DA.
James Carver, president of the Nassau County Police Benevolent Association, pointed to Singas campaign literature citing her willingness to prosecute police if they committed crimes as among the reasons for the unions’ support.
This seems to dovetail nicely with the support of police on Long Island and Nassau Republican legislators’ backing of President Trump, who is currently running what might be charitably called a racially charged re-election campaign.
In 2017, President Trump received a warm reception from police in neighboring Suffolk County when he encouraged officers “not to be nice.” To be “rough” when throwing someone “into the back of the paddy wagon.”
When they were pushing a suspected killer’s head into a squad car with a hand over the perp’s head, he said, don’t worry about hitting the head. “You can take the hand away.”
The Suffolk County Police Benevolent Association recently joined law enforcement organizations from across the state in endorsing Republican Congressman Lee Zeldin for re-election. Zeldin is a vocal Trump supporter who was scheduled to give a keynote address at this week’s Republican convention.
The New York City PBA has already endorsed Trump himself for president.
If police and their supporters are really concerned about “anti-police” sentiment, they might try not endorsing candidates who encourage police brutality.
But this focus on police brutality is in a way unfair to police.
Support for the Black Lives Movement exploded following the release of a video of a white policeman nonchalantly standing with his knee on George Floyd’s neck on a Minneapolis city street in broad daylight for 8 minutes and 46 minutes seconds with three officers beside him.
The sheer brazenness of the killing gave credence to millions of people who previously doubted claims surrounding the questionable killing of Black men that began in July 2013 after the killing of George Zimmerman in the shooting death of teen Trayvon Martin and continued with the deaths of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., and Eric Garner on Staten Island.
The evidence corroborating frequent claims of police brutality has continued to pile up ever since.
But Black Lives Matter’s focus is on more than policing. It also addresses systemic racism – 400 years after Blacks were brought to this country as slaves.
This racism is death by a thousand cuts, extending from an enormous gap in wealth to much higher unemployment rates to housing.
Nassau Republican officials should know something about this.
The county is currently among the nation’s most racially segregated suburbs, thanks to zoning codes, mortgage redlining, blockbusting, school district boundaries, major roadways, racial steering practices by some real estate agents and outright racism.
This didn’t happen by accident. Call it Jim Crow lite.
Nassau police may have had a role in this, but by no stretch of the imagination are they the only ones who bear responsibility.
