disclaimer: This is not coming from a place of self-deprecation or a need for accolades. This is coming from years of personally educating myself on this topic and diving deep into the discomfort of what I discovered. This is coming from an understanding that oppression of women in this country specifically has contributed to the oppression and harm of many others currently. Women have broken ceilings, and while women can still do a lot more we are no longer powerless like we have been led to believe, women have regained power in many ways. The discomfort I felt moving through the history of this topic has now led to a feeling of empowerment. To remain of the opinion that we are unable to affect change is allowing the oppression of the past to continue controlling the narrative that we are helpless and perpetuates the idea that we need protection at all costs. My hope in sharing this information for anyone reading this is to digest the references here before reacting to the sentiment.
Until I was in my late 20s, my identity and experiences were based on my narrow worldview. I was taught that it was the job of police to protect me and to always be respectful to them because of that. This was proven to be true, my experiences with police were benign and I was always protected in those interactions even when I was getting in trouble.
One particular experience I will share here:
I was arrested in 2007 around 5:30am for a DUI and the cop apologized to me for putting me in handcuffs and graciously helped me into the back of the police car. I dramatically failed each field sobriety test all three times they were given. I blew a .279 BAC when I was finally able to perform the breathalyzer test properly at the police station after many failed attempts. The police officer then drove me 30 minutes back to my friends house in a neighboring borough after I was booked at the station.
Takeaway: operating a vehicle with a BAC of .279 is a reckless and violent act, in that moment I was a violent criminal with a substance abuse problem. By the standards that are justifying police brutality I qualified for that treatment but did not receive it because I was protected. I am a white woman in a small town and had no criminal record.
A few years later I talked my way out of a second DUI because I know the rules and limitations of police reach and I knew how to play the cards.
In case you’re new to my story, I got sober in 2016 – almost ten years after facing consequences for my actions. It was not getting in trouble with the law that ultimately led me to change my lifestyle and behavior. It certainly contributed to the acknowledgment that I had a problem – but an internal shift must occur for any addictive behavior to be addressed. You can read more about my personal journey if you want here.
It took me a couple years to fully understand and wrap my head around how the police force as we know it came to be. It began as a protective measure under the guise of protecting Anglo-Saxon women from immigrants (yes both white and of color) and solidified after the abolition of slavery and reinforced by Jim Crow laws 1 2 3. (the first film ever produced set the tone for the media image of the “dangerous black man”4). It progressed into the militarized organization it is today that fully perpetuates the prison industrial system supported by a failed drug war we still seem to be naive to as a greater society5 6. The more I learned the more I understood how this contributes directly to the oppression of black and brown humans, those living in poverty, those experiencing mental difficulties, those indoctrinated into the criminal justice system, AND my own as a woman in our society7.
Oppression is fueled by the guise of protection.
We are now in a place where people are learning this reality and remain ignorant to it. I believe this is because, with the advent of information access, social media, and heavily bias media reporting (on both sides), and *some* progress (but far from enough), we have multiple vastly different cultures melting together in a new way for US history. We are watching the blending of it all and feeling attacked as a result. White women have grown up in America having it drilled into our heads that we NEED protection. It’s very difficult and takes a long time to break the conditioning we have been indoctrinated into.
Within my, admittedly still, narrow social world of predominately white humans it has become clear that this mentality has contributed to the unnecessary murders of black, brown, and white humans but also the ruining of lives of many who are swept up in the system and become institutionalized. Breaking the mentality of a human who has become institutionalized in our criminal justice system requires a lot of privilege and access to resources, not something every human has especially with the heavy stigma that remains about those who have been incarcerated or have a criminal record in their history8.
Our entire criminal justice system destroys the psyche for those who enter it and/or die as a result of it whether immediately at the hands of police trained by fear or later when mental states deteriorate in hopelessness.
It takes work to understand these harsh truths when your entire life has not confirmed that it is real. It is crucial that we understand just because what we have learned and seen has not been the same as what others say has been their experience it does not mean both experiences are untrue. We cannot discount the stories of others.
My life is no more or less worthy of protection than anyone else’s. We’ve got to allow that deeply rooted idea that we may net even realize is there go. It takes a lot to escape the denial that our very safe reality is reducing our ability to see how it harms others.
Educating ourselves can be hard when we are learning that what we’ve been taught to protect us may be harming others. I was defensive as I moved through the research that was challenging my reality. Humbling the ego is a major part of letting go of codependent relationship with a substance, I had been in that process as I was learning about these things and otherwise I don’t think it would have been possible for me to grasp what has been going on. Honestly, recovery programs can be helpful to move through the defensiveness while learning about this topic. If we can move through that defensive place we can allow some of the poison to be released from our minds. We can let it bleed out and open our minds to allow alternate realities to take up space in the hole it leaves and ultimately build empathy within us for those who live in harmful spaces.
I’m asking you to please digest before you discount when you see and hear things that directly oppose what you have known to be truth. There are many different truths in life, there is no one way that is consistent across the board, to think that there is has become a harmful naivety. We have to understand this if we are ever going to move forward.
We ALL possess what I am deeming “the miss piggy complex” and we need to understand it and then kill it. For me, miss piggy is a caricature representing the intersection between the police force, it’s underlying flavor of protecting “damsel in distress” white women at all costs, and the “helpless” woman who couldn’t possibly remain safe without a gang of armed strong men carrying her through.
We ALL need help sometimes, but we ALL possess the ability to do for ourselves as well9. We can help each other out when we need it, but this ancient mentality will always keep us in the oppressive state of “damsel in distress” which has turned into the Karen who cried Rape and is killing people.
–roxii
footnotes (clickable links)
1 https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057/9781137032447_4
2 https://psmag.com/news/the-dangerous-delusion-of-the-big-scary-black-man
4 ”A rapacious black man stalks a young white woman until, to protect her virginity, she leaps off a cliff to her death.” (https://time.com/3729807/d-w-griffiths-the-birth-of-a-nation-10/)
roxii 
Leave a comment