“They did what human beings looking for
freedom, throughout history, have often done. They left.”
These
are the words of Pulitzer Prize-winning author Isabel Wilkerson in her book, “The
Warmth of Other Suns.” The book
follows the story of three Black Southerners and their journey escaping racial
violence — a sharecropper’s wife who
left Mississippi in the 1930s for Chicago, an agricultural
worker who left Florida for New York City in the 1940s, and a doctor who left Louisiana in the early 1950s.
Their
journey was part of the Great Migration that occurred between 1916 and 1970,
where 6 million Black people moved out of the rural South to the urban
Northeast, Midwest, and West. As a native Texan moving to Southern California,
I was curious to learn more about the experience of Black Southerners who moved
here before me. I learned that this region held promise of safety and security
for Black people escaping the ever-present threat of violence and death in the
South. But as Black families found out then and Black communities today know
all too well, while the warmth of San Diego’s sun might be gentler than the
heat of the South, they both cast the familiar shadow of racial violence that
Black people across the country can’t escape.
As a
policy associate for the ACLU of San Diego & Imperial Counties, I advocate
for policies that advance police accountability. Recently, our office
commissioned a report by
Campaign Zero that looked at data from the San
Diego Police Department and the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department and
analyzed it for racial and identity disparities.
Here
is what the report found:
The San Diego Police Department
(SDPD):
- Stopped
Black people at a 219 percent higher rate than white people. In 85 percent of
SDPD beats, Black people were stopped at higher rates than white people. - Was
23 percent more likely to conduct consent searches on Black people than white
people, despite being less likely to be found with contraband than white
people. - Was
more likely to use force and even more severe forms of force against Black
people than white people.
The story was not any better at the
county level. The San Diego County Sheriff’s Department:
- Stopped
Black people at a 130 percent higher rate than white people. In every area of
jurisdiction, Black people were stopped at higher rates than white people. - Was
19 percent more likely to search people they perceived to be LGBTQ or gender
non-conforming and 38 percent more likely to arrest them without a warrant
compared to people who were not perceived to be LGBTQ or gender non-conforming.
This disparity was particularly worse for the Black people in this demographic. - Used
more severe levels of force against Black people and Asian/Pacific Islanders.
This
is the reality that Black San Diegans, Black Californians, and Black Americans
face on a daily basis. Our movement and freedom is policed more often and more
severely than our white neighbors. The sad irony about Black people and
families that moved to California to escape violence during the Great Migration
is that they and their descendants now live in a state with the most civilian
deaths caused by police violence. Of those
killings, Black people are disproportionately represented.
A recent study
found that nationwide, 1 in every 1,000 Black men can expect to be
killed by police. In fact, 13 of the 100 largest U.S. city police departments
kill Black men at higher rates than the U.S. murder rate.
Although
police brutality and killings of civilians have incredible human costs, there
is tremendous harm, both physical and psychological, inflicted by even the most
routine police activity. Across the country, law enforcement agencies regularly
monitor, harass, profile, stop, search, question, detain, and arrest Black
people at rates
completely disproportionate to their population.
Just
as laws were used to respond to the violence of Jim Crow, we also need laws
that protect Black communities from racially disparate policing. California has
begun to make headway in this regard by passing AB
392: The California Act to Save Lives, which created a higher,
“necessary” standard for when police can use force. Now, we need to raise the
standard for when police can stop and search people — in California and across
the country.
America
has begun to begrudgingly recognize Black people’s humanity, freedom, and civil
rights. And yet, there is still so much work to do. When I feel discouraged by
the slow progress of racial justice, I find comfort in the words of the Black
National Anthem, written just before the start of the Great Migration.
It
goes:
Sing a song
full of faith that the dark past has taught us,
Sing a song
full of hope that the present has brought us,
Facing the
rising sun of our new day begun,
Let us march
on till victory is won.
From calling on
city leaders to address biased policing to fighting law
enforcement’s use of intrusive surveillance technology (i.e., smart
streetlights), San Diegans — in
solidarity with communities across the country —
are marching boldly, loudly, and unapologetically toward that day where freedom
also includes freedom of Black movement.