LogFAQs > #953181787

Gwynevere posted...

And it isnt the roots of American policing if you ignore everything before 1838.

https://plsonline.eku.edu/insidelook/brief-history-slavery-and-origins-american-policing

Unless you think law enforcement in America didn't exist at all prior to then, in which case I really dont know what to tell you

I'm not the one saying that one thing is the root of everything, because that is reductive and not productive, that's what you are doing. The start of municipal policing in America was wealthy northern business owners banding together to get local governments to cover the cost of policing so that they didn't have to personally pay to protect their merchandise, which isn't about slavery and is a pretty significant part of the "roots" of our policing. My point was not that racism had nothing to do with it, it was that saying "racism is the root of American policing" is ignorant and only talking about one root in a big, tangled web of roots.