The protests over George Floyd’s lynching are still hot, but we’ve missed the point already. The roots of racism are institutional. As badly as the police sometimes act, they’re just the foot-solders of a much larger problem. Yes, police attack, arrest, and perjure themselves against black, brown, LGBTQ, and other minorities much more often than white people. The first mistake is to believe that’s an accident. The second, larger mistake is to assume we can fix this by fixing the police. As much as the police take to it naturally, they’re not racist accidentally; they’re just following orders. The roots of racism are built into the Justice system. Our governments demand injustice every day. The police are only one mechanism for that. To fix that, we have to fix our system of justice first.

I’m sympathetic about the distraction of police violence. It’s hard not to be enraged when the police attack peaceful protestors or target reporters. At least the police ‘fraternal societies’ have shown us their true animalistic nature; they’re criminal gangs, not unions. When, exactly, did ‘disrespecting a cop’ become a capital offense? Or why does every police union defends every police action no matter how vicious or undeserved? I agree with the Defund the Police movement, mostly because I cannot see any realistic way to weed the existing cronyism, criminality, and racism out of our departments. “Training” and “transparency” are almost literally the least we could do. We already know that won’t work because we’ve tried them before. They failed because they don’t touch the real problem.

This is a little off-topic, but the argument that there are “just a few bad apples”? Explain how a line of riot police can target CNN reporters in the mid-broadcast. There was precisely one real protester, and so our highly trained peace officers calmly and deliberately arrested the black reporter and his crew. Later, someone else apologized. That should never have happened, they swore. And that was all. Which police officer authorized the arrest? Dunno. Were they reprimanded? Uh. How about the officers who carried out the orders? did they explain themselves? I never heard anything about it. Or, to get international, how about the officers who attacked Australian reporters? Hard to pretend it was a mistake when they slammed the TV camera guy first. Two weeks ago, the Park Police said they were investigating the incident, but then nothing happened. We have the officers on video during the attack. Are we going to pretend there were no witnesses?

Or how about when police shot Brionna Taylor in her bed? Despite a planned no-knock raid, they forgot to turn on every single body camera. How could that happen? Better question: how often did those cops make that same oopsie? Does anyone check that stuff? (I can guarantee the police union would object to us finding out. And then they’d defend the action anyway.)

Most police officers are moral, ethical people who try to do good work. It is a small minority who openly defy legal order, hurt people, and then lie about it. But when every other cop backs that lie, it spreads. And, despite all the good work most police officers do, all we talk now about are the broken bodies, the impossible incarceration rates among minorities, and the blue wall that protects every malfeasance.

Yes, one bad apple does spoils the barrel, both literally and figuratively. Inspirational, kind, and principled work balances poorly against lies, assault, murder, and ruined lives. I’m sure the old guy just stumbled.

But here’s the rub: our governments need that crime. We depend on it every day. Why? Because crime generates cash, and we need the money. Our local governments — courts, police, legislatures — depend on fines, court fees, penalties, and eventually, incarceration to pay the bills. Our systems simply would not function without the cash they generate. For some reason, we refuse to pay for our governance with taxes, so they fall back to basics: take money from the defenseless.

We’ve gotten good at gouging every last penny we can from our victims. We charge flat-rate for tickets. Speed cameras are especially popular near me. We charge families for phone calls with the incarcerated, we charge the accused for their day in court, we charge our citizens for every missed fine and misunderstood command, we charge our prisoners for goddamn soap in jail. And every year we find new excuses to arrest or harass our own people because bigger crimes generate more income.

And we have to keep abusing our people to keep the lights on. It’s baked into the police, the courts, and the legislatures. We can’t run our government without that cash. Do you think any police chief wants their officers to issue fewer traffic tickets when they get to keep the cash? The money matters.

Here’s a silly local example. The county I live in runs the liquor wholesale business. (Don’t ask; it’s a holdover from Prohibition.) Everyone openly admits it’s stupidly outdated, inefficient, and unfair, but it spins off cash. Every public discussion ends with, “But what about the lost revenue?” No, they’ll never privatize it voluntarily.

So the scam is structuring law enforcement for profit. That’s the institutional root of racism. To make that work, you have to target people who can’t hurt you: poor, queer, colored, immigrant, trans, whatever. Ruin as many lives as you need to, just make sure they can’t call for help. Whatever you do, don’t abuse a white person who might make us look bad.

So yes, law enforcement has gotten pretty bad. Policing is so terrible, I cannot see how to fix it other than ripping it out whole and building something new. Defund the Police has that part right. But don’t get lost. Even though police departments have been overrun with racist white nationalists since I was a kid, that isn’t the root cause of racial injustice. Our governments are based on the institutional abuse that grew out of racism. The wholesale roots of racism start at a much higher level. We won’t fix the police until we fix ourselves.

So far, most people in the justice system have successfully kept low profiles, letting the police take the heat. The moment we blink, though, they’ll go right back to arresting as many black people as they can. They have no choice. No, the system will not correct itself, because it can’t. We won’t let them. We’d have to pay those costs ourselves, and we won’t.

The roots of racism? Us. And that means we have to fix it ourselves. If we don’t address the institutional stuff, all the rest — de-escalation training, civilian oversight, background checking, all that noise — will not matter one whit.

White people? Get a damn clue.