In the last twelve months, 1114 people were killed by the police in the United States, according to data from the Washington Post. Since 2015, 9,593 people have been killed by the police. These killings have a clear racial dimension: although African Americans make up just 12% of the population, they make up 27% of those killed by the police. The violence visited upon African Americans and the population as a whole, has led, not only to calls for greater diversity among the police, but to actual, concrete diversity programs. Experience suggests that diversity is simply not enough.
The theory of diversity is this: the reason that an institution is racist is because its members are not representative of the wider community. So, if only we could get that institution to be more representative, it would take the interests of the wider community more closely into its decisions, and be fairer and kinders, and less racist. At face value, that logic seems unchallengeable, but it can be challenged. There are many reasons why diversity could fail to live up to its potential. Samantha J. Simon, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Arizona who studied police training, and wrote a book, “Before the Badge: How Academy Training Shapes Police Violence”, discovered that diversity has not lived up to its billing. In an interview with the Christian Science Monitor, Simon explained that police training shapes a culture of violence in the police. Although it may not seem like it, she found strong evidence that police academies have listened to the public’s outrage over police violence, and that police departments have greatly diversified their ranks, and taught verbal de-escalation. The problem is not that there are not enough people of color or women within the police, in fact, if the police were representative of the United States, then just 12% of the police would be African American. So just from a numbers perspective, diversity can only go so far. That, however, is not the subject of her work. Simon does not say that police departments should not pursue diversity, rather, that its police culture that’s rotten. She says that there are two approaches to police:
“A guardian approach to policing might be more of a reactive, community-based approach. A warrior approach to policing would be much more proactive, much more [about] chasing down “criminals or bad guys.” What I found emphasized was this warrior framework [that] includes staying hypervigilant, remaining extremely suspicious of others. Cadets, once they went onto the streets, it was really essential that they be prepared for violence, no matter what. Even in classes that were focused on de-escalation, officer safety was the No. 1 priority. That was emphasized constantly.”
She explains why diversity has not worked, by saying that,
What I saw in the academy was that everyone needs to align themselves with this worldview that emphasizes violence. Everyone has to demonstrate that they are capable and willing to use violence on the part of the institution. So it doesn’t matter what your gender or race or ethnicity or age are in the academy ... [because] the socialization process is so strong, so effective. I don’t see demographic diversity, at least at the levels that it’s at right now, as being an effective way of curbing police violence.
This is the real issue. People who promote diversity ignore the fact that culture, and in other contexts, economic interests, can make someone act against the demographic they belong to. An African American police person may join the force to make a difference, but once they are in, they have to prove that they are aligned with the warrior approach that the police department has. Simon notes that where Black police officers are deployed to Black neighborhood, the police are not seen as an occupying force, but, the policing does not fundamentally change.
While diversity is a laudable goal, we need to think more radically. I see this in so many areas where people imagine that if only the CEO was black, if only the secretary of this cabinet department was black, if only the director of this movie was black, etc, things would change, but in many ways, nothing changes, because true change isn’t about musical chairs, it’s not just about making demographic changes, there have to be changes in terms of how we train our people and the culture they embrace. Without that, we will not resolve problems like police violence.