What Nazis Can Teach Us About American Police
In the wake of George Floyd's murder, everybody is talking about what to do next, how to overcome racism in this country. They argue about what laws to enact, whether or not to defund the police, how to invest in minority communities, etc. Frankly, I am much more interested in what makes white people hate people of color in the first place, which brings me back to the writings of Polish-Swiss psychologist, psychoanalyst, and philosopher Alice Miller . Alice Miller Miller made a career of examining the long-term effects of child abuse and the impact of repressed memories on the psyche. In her book For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence , she examines German "poisonous pedagogy" as the cause of the rise of the Nazis and antisemitism . I will quote her for the rest of this blog, substituting the words "policemen" for Nazis, and "racism" for antisemitism. Her original writings were in German so I've had to m...