In the News - Trooper Accident

Angela's ITN presentation today looked at a trial of a trooper accused of intentionally hitting a suspect with his patrol car. The troper is white and the suspect is black, so there's the possibility of a racial element to this act. One interesting thing here is that the video from the patrol car records the trooper saying "Yeah, I hit him. I was trying to hit him." This would seem to be an open-and-shut case. If someone admits to doing something on video, how could they possibly not be convicted. In trials we have the right not to incriminate ourselves, but video can do it for us without our consent.

Perhaps it goes down to what we think about speech, and what Freud called periphrasis (sp?). When we say things, are we revealing truths about our intentions and beliefs, or are we voicing a socially acceptable belief that we may not really hold? Is the trooper bragging about hitting the man expressing some deep truth about his racist psyche? Or is he showing some bravado in fornt of what he believes are racists (other troopers) in order to conceal his horror at what he's done. Perhaps the most depressing thing is that someone might voice a racist belief because they believe it is more acceptable than the alternative.

I've always felt that racism is one of those things you can't simply attribute to racist people. It's a myth to think that some people are racists and others are not. Rather, we live in a racist culture that circulates myths about race to the detriment of certain races. Our language, our representations, our social structures, they all support racism in some ways. So, instead of looking at whether someone said something racist, it's more important to look at where that racism came from.