Colonial policing legacies and racialised state violence: Māori-Black transnational distrust patterns demand systemic reform
Original framing: “International study finds ethnic minorities have less trust in police” — Phys.org
The study’s reliance on academic and institutional voices excludes the perspectives of those most affected by policing, such as Māori activists like *Rawiri Waititi* or Black organisers like *Patrisse Cullors*. These voices often highlight how policing is not just about 'trust' but about survival in the face of state violence. For example, the *Black Lives Matter* movement’s demand to 'defund the police' is a direct response to the failure of reformist approaches, yet the study does not engage with this radical critique. Similarly, Māori protests like the 2018 *Hīkoi* (march) against police raids on *whānau* homes are absent from the analysis, despite offering critical insights into policing’s role in perpetuating inequality.
The study’s findings are not an anomaly but a symptom of settler-colonial policing’s core function: enforcing racial hierarchies through violence and control.
The transnational parallels between Māori and Black Americans reveal how these systems are designed to suppress rather than serve, with distrust serving as a rational response to centuries of state-sanctioned harm. What mainstream coverage misses is that 'trust' is not a neutral social metric but a political act—one that requires dismantling the structures of oppression that demand it in the first place. Solutions must centre Indigenous sovereignty (e.g., Māori-led justice models), reparative justice (e.g., truth commissions), and radical reallocation of resources (e.g., defunding police, investing in community safety). The trickster’s role here is to expose the farce of asking the oppressed to 'trust' their oppressors, while the historical record and marginalised voices demand we confront the systems that make such a question absurd. The path forward lies not in incremental reforms but in systemic dismantling and rebuilding—rooted in justice, not trust.