That, to my mind, is the most important lesson learned from last month's acquittal of the four New York City cops charged in the killing of Guinean immigrant Amadou Diallo. Although officers Kenneth Boss, Sean Carroll, Edward McMellon and Richard Murphy may have fired 41 shots at an unarmed man entering his home, they were just the agents of American tradition, doing the dirty work of a culture in denial about its racism.
Scapegoats aid the act of denial and police officers make fine scapegoats.
But as long as we keep focusing ire on the agents, the real culprit goes unnoticed and we continue going in circles of mutual acrimony. The jury that heard the Diallo case had to be persuaded that the defendants had something to gain, other than self-defense, by killing Diallo. The motive, of course, was to enforce the racial hierarchy this society demands of law enforcement. Prosecutors had to make a case for murder without explicating a motive. Diallo's complexion made him an instant suspect and the Special Crimes Unit, to which the four officers belonged, required that they ruthlessly enforce that racial hierarchy.