SLAVE CATCHERS BY ANOTHER NAME

The horrifying experience of these two Black men occurred in a country that has never overcome its troubled history of r*cist policing that too often targets and dehumanises Black people since police began as slave catchers. In the early 1700s, slave patrols enforced slavery through brutal tactics, surveilling and punishing enslaved people, while early 19th-century police in cities like Boston focused on controlling a ‘dangerous underclass’ of freed Africans, immigrants and the poor.

After the Civil War, discriminatory Jim Crow laws perpetuated racial oppression, with police enforcing segregation and ignoring white violence against Black communities. The legacy of institutional racism persists today, as evidenced by disproportionate police violence against Black people (accounting for 22 per cent of police k*llings in 2024 despite being 13 per cent of the population) and racial profiling, such as with police stopping Black drivers more often, as shown in Stanford research.

Video credit: @democracynow (X)

Sources:

https://theconversation.com/the-racist-roots-of-american-policing-from-slave-patrols-to-traffic-stops-112816 

https://youtu.be/4QVbKzYPAKE