UK police reforms are to force cops to sit through lessons on “Black history” and “anti-racism” as officials push to get more officers to identify as “woke”.
Policing in the UK is apparently not already progressive enough, with British officials publishing an action plan on Tuesday which will see officers across England and Wales face mandatory lectures on the likes of “Black history” and “anti-racism” in the hopes it will lower racial disparities affecting those of African descent.
Having been initiated in the wake of the Black Lives Matter in the United States, the action plan’s initial recommendations were published almost two years to the day after George Floyd’s death.
According to a press release published by National Police Chief’s Council (NPCC), officials responsible for the plan are hoping that forcing officers to undergo various types of anti-racist training will lower the number of black people who find themselves having forced used against them by cops.
Meanwhile, the chairman in charge of monitoring the rollout of the plan, Abimbola Johnson, has said that she wants to see more police officers identify themselves as being “woke”.
“‘Woke’ is treated as if it is a negative word, it is not. Being woke just means being alert to injustice in society,” Johnson is reported by The Telegraph as saying.
“I want to see policing actually thinking about what that definition means and whether if you are going to become anti-racist, you need to become comfortable with being labelled as woke,” she continued. “I don’t really see how you can be anti-racist and not be comfortable with that terminology.”
While Johnson expressed how keen she was to see police identify as being “woke”, what she was reportedly not so keen on was a refusal on the part of police commissioners to say that there was institutional racism within forces across Britain.
This refusal seemingly did not come easy, with senior cops in the country deeply considering labelling their own organisations as being “institutionally racist” late last year.
The move was championed in large part by Johnson, who claimed that the move was necessary for UK forces to build rapport with so-called “BAME” — Black, Asian, and Minority Ethnic — communities.
“The plan needs to accept institutional racism, if it is to be anti-racist,” Johnson said in December last year. “If the idea is to win the trust of black communities, policing needs to start by acknowledging both the historical and current manifestations of racism in policing.”
Her call was echoed by the NPCC’s vice-chairman, Sir Dave Thompson, who also claimed that it was “very clear there will be institutional racism issues in policing”.
“There will also be systemic racism, structural racism and also racial disparities that are not due to racism in policing because we police an unequal society,” the official claimed while noting that the public admission of “institutional racism” was at that time receiving “careful thought”.
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