Dear Students, Staff, and Faculty,
As the leader of a majority-minority campus, an institution devoted to social justice and the cardinal principles of equality, it is incumbent on me to speak out about the intolerable violence that has been visited on black citizens like George Floyd.
I am sure you are all aware that Minneapolis police officer, Derrick Chauvin, has been charged with third-degree murder and manslaughter of Mr. Floyd. Chauvin’s actions have been rightly condemned by Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and the city’s chief of police, Medaria Arrandondo. While it is tempting to label this outrage as a “tragedy,” I have come to believe that is far too anodyne a description of what appears on videotape to be something closer to an extrajudicial execution. The principles on which our country was founded—equal justice before the law—were nowhere in evidence on the streets of Minneapolis.
Sadly, and truly tragically, we have been here before. Indeed, this is but one in a string of violent actions ending in death that our African American citizens have endured. Enough. We cannot stand by and permit this to become a twisted kind of new normal in which the unrestrained use of force can be unleashed on joggers (Ahmaud Arbery), street vendors (Eric Garner), passers-by (Michael Brown) or people sitting in their own living rooms (Breonna Taylor). All of us are at risk when any of us are at risk.
Police officers swear by oaths that they must be held to, to treat all citizens with dignity and respect. It is a commitment I know our own campus safety officers take very seriously, as do most of the nation’s police. This sacred responsibility was underlined by the leader of the Major Cities Chiefs, led by Houston Police Chief, Art Acevedo, who condemned the actions of the four officers involved in this incident and applauded their termination. “The officers’ actions are inconsistent with the training and protocols of our profession,” he noted.
Yet it should come as little surprise that such a violent outcome came to pass. In the course of their training, police cadets in Minneapolis are explicitly instructed that they should never use the kind of “restraint” that was applied to George Floyd. And yet department records show that they were used 56 times last year and far more often against African Americans than any other group. Why was this pattern of unprofessional behavior tolerated? Again, enough.
What will put an end to it? A serious, searching, and aggressive effort to stamp out police attacks on innocent citizens, through the mechanisms of the law and the enforcement of professional standards. No excuses. This cannot become another “tragedy” that we dispose of by wringing our hands. It is a call to action, but one that must be directed at those who perpetrate racial violence. Accountability is a responsibility we all share.
The civil protests that have spread throughout the country, including in our own city, are an expression of first amendment rights to call for justice. Destructive, violent riots are another matter. They are particularly troubling when directed at small business owners who are often immigrant and minority shopkeepers that serve the very communities afflicted by injustice. We need only examine the durable consequences of the “long, hot summers” of the mid-1960s to recognize that the primary victims of these unlawful actions are the same people who suffer from police violence: minority communities. Decades after the riots that afflicted Newark, Watts, Detroit, and the Bronx, they are still suffering the consequences: their commercial neighborhoods never recovered.
We need a better way forward, a reckoning with injustice, and a steadfast promise that equality before the law will be respected. UMass Boston was founded on the belief that students of all classes, races, ethnicities, and identities deserve the best of higher education. Our students, faculty, and staff feel injustice in their bones on such occasions and hence reaffirm that a commitment to equality must be the watchword of all American institutions and the public professions we charge with keeping the peace.
Katherine Newman
Interim Chancellor