Amy Osborne By Ashlee Banks ·March 10, 2021March 10, 2021
The FBI released an internal report obtained by ABC News stating white supremacists intentionally search for positions within police departments across the nation. The report, based on investigations conducted between 2016 and 2020, warns white supremacists will “very likely seek affiliation with military and law enforcement entities in furtherance of” their extreme and dangerous agendas.
This news should be filed under: what else is new? Many of us are familiar with the origins of law enforcement. Modern policing was created in the early 1900s, but policing dates back to the colonies. According to Time magazine, parts of the nation started policing communities to control immigrants, and in 1704 police patrol was created in the South to preserve the slave system. Those on patrol would chase and hunt enslaved people who escaped. They would terrorize enslaved people to prevent them from rioting. These patrols existed until the Civil War, and then gave way to the Ku Klux Klan, a group notorious for lynching and terrorizing Black people. Eventually these groups morphed into the police forces we’re familiar with today. This is why this news comes as no surprise. White supremacists just want to ensure that their ability to commit violent acts against people of color remains intact.
I think it was a waste of time for the FBI to send their findings to law enforcement agencies in order for them to be on the lookout for white supremacists trying to join their ranks. The FBI, the same agency responsible for the deaths of Fred Hampton, Malcolm X, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and others, knows firsthand what it means to be motivated by white supremacy. What makes the agency, or anyone else for that matter, believe police departments, which are rooted in white supremacy, will police themselves? If it hasn’t happened now, in the year 2021, what makes the FBI believe anyone will heed the agency’s warning.
On January 6, we got to see firsthand how white supremacy within law enforcement and the military is still present. Off-duty officers and military members who walked alongside civilian white supremacists were waved in through barricades by U.S. Capitol police after simply flashing their credentials. These cops and military members were not doing the nation a service by invading the U.S. Capitol two months ago. They weren’t saving this country. They were terrorizing the nation in the name of Donald Trump, their white supremacist-in-chief.
FBI Director Christopher Wray testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee last month stating, “the problem of domestic terrorism has been metastasizing across the country for a long time now, and it’s not going away anytime soon.” What he should’ve said is the problem of domestic terrorism has been present in the U.S. since it was hijacked by Europeans.
It will take more than an FBI investigation in order for us to truly address white supremacists infiltrating the criminal justice system. We just got rid of a president who exploited white supremacy as part of his very popular brand. Racism is the American way, and no report is going to change that.
TOPICS: FBI investigation police violence Racism White Supremacy
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