The uneasy relationship between Black people and the police is rooted in our history

It was Oct. 17, 1995, when four other African American men and I left Washington D.C., heading back to Kansas City after attending the Million Man March the day before. We were somewhere in Maryland at night when we were pulled over by a police car. Soon, there were several other cars and officers on the scene flashing their lights and yelling for some reason.

We hadn’t been speeding. We showed them our licenses and the rental papers for the minivan. Yet that was not good enough. They made us get out of the vehicle as they questioned us: “Where are you going?” “Where have you been?” “Why are you traveling at night?” We answered their questions to the best of our abilities, but that still wasn’t good enough. They made us take our luggage out of the minivan so that they could search it and the vehicle right there on the side of the highway.

The police found no drugs or weapons, and had no reason to detain us any longer. They got back in their cars without an apology or ever telling us why we were pulled over in the first place. We were left to repack our bags that they had carelessly gone through, get back in our vehicle and drive back home.

That was not the first time I experienced unfair treatment at the hands of police, and it certainly wouldn’t be the last.

Over the last few weeks, I’ve heard people say that not all cops are racist. I will go a step further and say most cops are not racist. However, we all have unconscious biases, and if they are not acknowledged and addressed, they will result in some form of action.

But to get to the heart of the tension between minority communities and police, you have to deal with culture and history. Much of today’s modern-day policing was birthed out of the old slave patrols. These were groups of white men whose job it was to keep slaves in check and discipline them when they deemed it necessary. So when police departments became standard in the mid- to late-1800s, the practice of keeping Black people in check continued.

Since this mentality was instilled in police departments from the beginning, it has now become part of the culture to treat Black men in particular with contempt and aggression. As a result of decades of brutality and harassment, minority communities often don’t look at the police in the same way white communities do. African Americans view police officers with suspicion, seeing them as dangerous.

That has led Black parents to have “the talk” with their teenagers, especially boys, urging them to be careful and cautious when encountering the police. When you have friends who have been harassed, relatives who’ve been mistreated and your own bad encounters with police, it is hard to view someone wearing the blue uniform as an ally.

So the tension continues to this very day, which is why in many large cities, it is hard for police departments to recruit Black officers. This leads to a lack of diversity in places like the Kansas City Police Department, which does not reflect the community it is supposed to serve and protect.

The only way to change this narrative is to build (not rebuild, because I don’t believe it ever truly existed) trust between the police department and the African American community. There are at least two things that can help to bring about healing. First, we need more community police programs. And the officers leading those programs should look like the communities they serve. Second, there needs to be an independent review board to receive complaints regarding police, and this board needs the power to sanction and subpoena. Right now, there are so many complaints that never get addressed. All this does is increase the tension that has existed between law enforcement and the Black community that goes back over a century.

Emanuel Cleaver III is senior pastor of St. James United Methodist Church in Kansas City.