Travis Gosa, assistant professor of African studies at Cornell University, comments on the growing sympathy of fugitive ex-LAPD officer Christopher Dorner among African Americans.
Gosa says:
“When African Americans call Dorner the ‘black Jason Bourne’ they are not condoning the killing of innocent people, rather, they are voicing decades of distrust and ill-will toward police and the criminal justice system.
“The Dorner manhunt has activated a deep-seated cultural distrust of the criminal justice system that seems to resurface during high-profile events, such as the Rodney King beating, the O.J. Simpson case, or more recently, the Treyvon Martin shooting.
“Despite feeling somewhat more optimistic about race since the Obama election, many black Americans still believe that racism makes black men a target. The sense is that police are not interested in protecting and serving black communities. Instead, the police are seen as a larger plot to re-enslave blacks in their own communities, or to restore a type of New Jim Crow system of segregation.
“Popular culture contributes to the distrust. The rapper Ab-Soul has called Dorner a ‘necessary evil’ to expose police corruption and the on-going racial profiling of young, black men. Hip hop culture since NWA’s ‘F tha Police’ has expressed the view that the police are the enemy, and the ‘Stop Snitching’ slogan can still be heard today.”
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