The belief among many white Americans that they have the right to stop, question and police any and all black Americans goes back to the slave patrols and slave laws, which deputized ALL white people to maintain the economic and racial hierarchy of the American caste system.
White Americans understand that often times the police, as they have been historically, remain the enforcement arm for the maintenance of white spaces and white hierarchy. The idea of black "trespass"criminalized black people during slavery & intensified with with Reconstruction.
This is, perhaps, the next #1619Project essay.
Like, I can’t even imagine going into a space other than my own home and thinking I have the right to stop and question someone else about their right to be there.
