In countries with oppressive regimes, limitations on freedom are clear to everyone. In the United States, however, most individuals perceive their lives as free and remain unaware of the extent to which their freedom is limited.
Michael Brown’s death has become a catalyst for something much more important than the obvious: that America has not overcome its racist history. His death gives us the opportunity to critically assess the politics of our circumstance and to question the very situation in which we experience ourselves as free.
Since 1996, in response to the war on drugs, the Department of Defense transferred 4.3 billion dollars in military equipment to local and state police. After 9/11, the Department of Homeland Security made additional equipment available to local law enforcement through federal funds for terrorism prevention. In June of this year, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) published a 96-page report on the rise of police militarization, entitled “War Comes Home: The Excessive Militarization of American Policing,” documenting how the war on drugs and 1990s crime bills laid the groundwork for police militarization. Unsurprisingly, like the war on drugs and police abuse in general, “the use of paramilitary weapons and tactics primarily impacted people of color.”
One would think that these recent developments might bolster popular support to change the policies that perpetuate inequality, but what’s true is quite the opposite. A recent poll conducted by the Pew Research Center found that among 1,000 adults polled, 80 percent of black Americans believe the Ferguson incident raises issues about race, while only 37 percent of whites agreed. Nearly half of the whites (47 percent) believed that race is getting more attention than it deserves.
And this is precisely the problem, and why, no matter what statements are said by the president or lack there of, America is not a color-blind society. If the president of the U.S., who, by the way, is black, cannot openly address the underlying issue of this tragic incident, then how are we as a nation supposed to move forward? What the protesters of Ferguson asked for is not ridiculous. They were not asking for handouts; they simply demanded something that most white Americans have: equal protection under the law.
I’d like to think that, within the privileged space of a college campus, we are insulated from the military tactics of local law enforcement. But the Pentagon’s 1033 program, which allows the Defense Department to unload its excess military equipment onto local police forces, also targets college campuses, according to documents obtained by the Muckrock website. More than 100 campus police forces have received military materials from the Pentagon. Schools that participate in the program range from liberal arts to community colleges to the entire University of Texas system. Emory, Rice, Purdue and the University of California, Berkeley, are all on the list.
Today, as many colleges apply for Homeland Security grants and armored vehicles, college campuses are listed among the safest places in the country. It is time to bridge the gap between public perception and the growing militarization of college campuses. We can start by reassessing our perceptions of what it means to be “truly” free. Only then can we begin the call to action.