In a typical mainstream media editorial opposing the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative (MCRI), the editors of the the Chigago Tribune write (among other equally incorrect assertions):
But it would also prevent a town with a minority population from making special efforts to hire minority police officers for the benefit of all residents. A white cop patrolling a black or Hispanic neighborhood often will find it hard to get useful tips from residents, who may be more forthcoming with someone who looks and sounds like them. In that situation, hiring more minority police applicants can help in fighting crime. Under Proposal 2, however, municipalities would be barred from such common-sense approaches.
Although he was not replying specifically to that editorial but rather to the identical argument from One United Michigan, Jack Dunphy gives that argument a much-needed burial, and so I am just going to quote him.( “Jack Dunphy,” by the way, is “nom de cyber” of a Los Angeles police officer who, for obvious reasons, can’t write under his own name. Let me add, however, that I have met “Jack,” and he not only really does exist but is a most impressive fellow.)
… [I]s One United Michigan actually taking the position that minority applicants are incapable of becoming police officers unless they are artificially helped along by racial preferences? Would the city of Detroit, where virtually the entire governmental apparatus is run by blacks, suddenly be unable to hire black police officers if MCRI were to pass?
The press release also cites the dubious notion that a police department should reflect the diversity of the community it serves….
A police department that is representative of the city it serves is all well and good, to a point. It’s difficult to envision the Detroit Police Department becoming all or even mostly white, even if MCRI were to pass, but there are neighborhoods in Detroit where less than four percent of the residents have bachelor’s degrees, and where less than half have graduated from high school. Should the police officers who patrol those neighborhoods reflect this same level of education?
And this raises another question: Should a city’s black police officers (or firemen or teachers or what have you) be mandated to work in its black neighborhoods? If ethnic identity is so highly prized in forging community relationships, should black cops be excluded from white neighborhoods? Here in Los Angeles, for example, police officers can choose to work in any of its 19 patrol divisions. Most of the city’s black population lives in the four divisions that make up South and South-Central L.A., but there are proportionally more black officers working the mostly white areas of the city’s Westside. Should those officers be denied the freedom to work where they choose for the sake of conforming to some nebulous “diversity” model?
Taking it further, if black officers are the only ones presumed to be culturally attuned to black neighborhoods, are white officers the only ones qualified to work white neighborhoods?
Supporters of racial preferences argue that they will reduce the salience of race in American society, that treating people unequally based on their race is the surest path to racial equality. If you believe that, continue to support racial preferences … and then come see me for a good deal on some well-known bridges and swampland.
As I may have mentioned in this comment section before, a black roommate of mine once told me that a black police officer would actually be less accepted in a black community, as a sell-out to whitey.
I don’t know that he’d ever lived in a majority-black neighborhood, though, so his impression of how the residents of one would react probably warrant a grain of salt.