Healing Trauma: Perspectives And Attitudes, 54

Very recently, an African-Canadian TV news presenter in Toronto was jacked-up by the local police. This overzealous cop had tailgated her for a minor traffic violation, then stopped her car just in front of her house (a nice neighbourhood, I did tell you that she works in TV), asked her all kinds of dumb questions about who she was and if she really lived in this neighbourhood, demanded to see her ID, treated her like a second-class citizen and left her feeling shaken, dumbfounded and traumatized. I am trying to look up this story but Uncle Google ain't even whispering, and I don't believe the excuse of Fake News, so this surely must have happened because I was hearing about it on CBC all day yesterday, and on Sunday, too. Anyway, I have no doubt that this happened and that this woman has a legitimate complaint and that the police anywhere can be really despicable. I am neither black nor a woman, but I have also had my share of being bothered by police. My crime? Looking poor and bohemian. I am a white male, but I have still been targeted by police for simply looking...suspicious? Now, I have no doubt that there are racists among the police, and really a lot of them behave pretty despicably towards vulnerable people. Was this woman target for being black? Probably. For being female? Could be? For a minor traffic violation? Maybe, maybe not. Because the cop involved was a racist, misogynist jerk? Yep. What they aren't telling us is that being poor and having a mental illness also can make you a vulnerable target for police bullying, and it would only be nice if the Politically Correct Thought Police would consider including us in their pantheon. There is an elephant in the room here. This woman innocently assumes, as do her colleagues and friends, that being a member of the upper middle class should give her automatic immunity to police bullying. They are after all, the class that the police are especially mandated to protect. This to me speaks volumes about the smug, self-righteous arrogance of the white middle class, and this is one area where yes, I am convinced that there is White Privilege and that it is a huge problem. It is this assumption that income and social class makes you somehow special and privileged and that the rest of the Great Unwashed is fair game because, really, we only exist to serve the needs, whims and desires of the bourgeoisie. And if there is even the slightest hint that we are straying off course then of course Johnny Law is going to be in there like a dirty shirt, stopping us, demanding to see our ID, insulting us and generally making us know that we can never feel totally safe in our own country, our own city, our own neighbourhood. It is only a shame that it is a black woman who was picked on. I would love to see some of the smug white eggheads and other bourgeois swine from Upper Canada to get a taste of what a lot of us have to live with day after day: black, brown, aboriginal, female, queer, mentally ill, and poor. In terms of the police, they might always be a problem. It seems that the same personality that is attracted to police work also tends to be not very well educated with strong conservative values and authoritarian tendencies. If they vote, they are more likely to pick rightwing or right of centre candidates. So, what do we do about this? This is a problem that affects many strata in society, and a lot of it comes down to education and access to education. It is only too well-known that higher education in Canada as in the US is obscenely expensive, and there are also a lot of people like me, who would have flourished with a decent liberal arts university education, who simply have not been able to access the privilege for lack of funds and family stability and support. Here is my little idea. Make a liberal arts and humanities education not only mandatory, but completely accessible. If post-secondary education, centred around the liberal arts and humanities, focussing on psychology, sociology, history, political science, English literature, anthropology, philosophy, ethics and comparative religions, were to immediately follow secondary education, completely publicly funded, and obligatory to all students for an extra four or five years, I wonder what this would do to influence future generations, and whatever occupations they work at, including policing? Worth a try?