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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - VI. Justice - 25. The Police and Other Public Contacts - 2. The Southern Policeman - 3. The Policeman in the Negro Neighborhood
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540 An American Dilemma
man and is looked down on generally by the middle class whites, an
appointment to the police force means an advance in income and economic
security to poor white unskilled workers.
Aside from the matters of monthly income and regularity of employment, it is
quite clear that many policemen ... arc hungry for the opportunity to exercise
authority. An ex-house-to-house salesman, clerk, truck driver, or textile worker not
infrequently likes to have a gun handy, and enjoys the authority which his badge
provides.^®
The typical Southern policeman is thus a low-paid and dependent man,
with usually little general education or special police schooling. His social
prestige is low. But he is the local representative of the law; he has
authority and may at any time resort to the use of his gun. It is not
difficult to understand, that this economically and socially insecure man,
given this tremendous and dangerous authority, continually feels himself
on the defensive. ^^He usually expects to be challenged when about routine
duties. . . . This defensive attitude makes the poHceman^s job tedious and
nerve-racking, and leaves the public with the feeling that policemen are
crude and hard-boiled.”^® He is a frustrated man, and, with the oppor-
tunity given him, it is to be expected that he becomes aggressive. There
are practically no curbs to the policeman’s aggressiveness when he is deal-
ing with Negroes whom he conceives of as dangerous or as ^^getting out of
their place.” He is accustomed also to deal roughly with ‘^outside agita-
tors,” ^^Communists,” ^‘subversive influences,” and in his mind there is a
suspicion that there is a relation between these two groups of enemies of
society.
3. The Policeman in the Negro Neighborhood
This weak man with his strong weapons—backed by all the authority
of white society—is now sent to be the white law in the Negro neighbor-
hood. There he is away from home.
He is an outsider, and there is such a thing as a “bad nigger.” Fiction, of course,
has dramatized the character, but there are facts which demand recognition. With
the cop an outsider, the “bad nigger” an insider, a ready use of firearms is inevitable.
The philosophies of the “outside” policeman and of the “bad nigger” contribute to
the high homicide rate of Southern cities, for the records show that the police are
most likely to get killed in the same cities where brutality, including killings, is
most prevalent.^*^
As far as the cultural and social adjustment of the Negroes is concerned,
the Southern folice system is undoing much of what Northern fhilan-
thro’py and Southern state governments are trying to accomflish through
education and by other means. The average Southern policeman is a pro-
moted poor white with a legal sanction to use a weapon. His social heritage
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