I love the story of the Promise school, and the idea behind it. Extending services to communities that really need it is often an economical and morally worthwhile way to invest in your people, and schools like this really do that, from sun up to sun down. Really does take a village.
The standard may be humanly impossible to achieve, but it is far too important a role in our society to not *strive* for it constantly, and always be holding ourselves to the highest of standards.
Listen, I am a pragmatist at heart. The job is an impossible one... it’s being prepared to go to war with an enemy while in the midst of a completely innocent and friendly community you need to care about and be trusted by, able to go from helping a cat out of a tree to engaging a gunman in a moment, from helping someone having heart attack to chasing a drunk driver, and all while you have to be a member of society and have a family and mow the lawn. And there is obviously a certain amount of appropriate care that has to be taken, and situational awareness that is essential, and understanding the odds is key to survival. I’d never deny one iota of that, and I would never take it for granted; that is not how I think.
But.
The role of the policeman is unique. A policeman or woman is the long arm of the law, a literal embodiment of our legal system and government, an armed one with legal government protection and indeed authorization to use violence against citizens. And when the overwhelming majority of actions our police have to undertake involve no serious threat to life, either their own or anothers, from white people OR black people, then they simply cannot look at something like the color of a citizens skin and go into situations with said citizen in a different manner in which they go into situations with citizens of a different skin color. That’s just not acceptable in my America, and the idea that “black men“ are so threatening to police that they warrant such treatment is antithetical to my belief system in regards to The Law.
Being a police officer should be the most difficult to get job that a person can get. It should require the absolute very best of its officers, men and women of outstanding intellect, strength, and character. The standards should be absolute, and there should be no internal protection of officers who do not meet those standards. The men and woman who take that job should receive the full support of everyone they protect and serve in every way... health care (both physical and mental), legal care, excellent pay, pension, the works. Both police and elected officials leadership should be effective and reflective, and not put officers into situations in which they cannot perform at their best. They deserve the best.
Unfortuately, not all of that is going to happen. That sucks, but we can strive for it.
But we must also strive for the best from our police officers, to hold them to the very highest standards, and the idea that it should be expected that innocent black people be treated differently than people of other colors... I can’t get behind that. I get the underlying intention, but I cannot subscribe to it.
Oh, and I have no idea what either of these sentences means:
You seem to have a monolithic view of Black people which does not acknowledge that they are like any other race which means they have some bad actors.You automatically assume that any fatal encounter is strictly the fault of the police
I do not have a monolithic view of black people outside of instances in which analyzing data by race or whatever might suggest that has some value, I obviously know that people of ALL colors have bad actors among them, and I would never EVER say something as extreme as “any fatal encounter is strictly the fault of the police”... that’s nuts. Every fatal encounter has dozens of influences.
