I had just read a nauseating post by self-declared liberal pragmatist Justin Barogona, who authored this despicable sentiment:
“The fact is that the protests would quickly simmer down if a handful of actions were taken, none of which involves SWAT teams, tear gas, riot gear, assault rifles or armored vehicles. The moment Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson gets charged with the murder of Mike Brown, the city of Ferguson won’t find itself overtaken with protests, rallies and marches…Wilson needs to be charged with a crime, and that needs to happen sooner rather than later. Anger and frustration will only continue to build upon itself as long as Wilson isn’t staring down a murder charge.”
This is essentially extortion, bordering on terrorism, I thought. Is this really mainstream liberal thought today in the United States—mob coerced indictments, regardless of truth, due process or fairness? Sacrifice a possibly innocent public servant so Ferguson, Mo. won’t burn? Bragona’s smug insistence that the obvious course of action is to charge a man with murder for political expediency marks him as beneath contempt, an enemy of the rule of law as well as basic fairness and decency. But how close is the position of Eric Holder and the Justice Department, as well as President Obama?
This story, telling us the the Obama Administration is promising civil rights leaders “justice,” is ominous. “Justice,” to the protesters and those who decided to make the death of Mike Brown another symbolic indictment of white racism, and the facts be damned,means only one thing: tar Darren Wilson as a racist killer. Is Obama playing a dangerous game of deceit with his core supporters, or is he merely promising justice as it is supposed to be, letting the law follow the facts after an objective investigation? The latter is the obvious ethical and responsible course, indeed the only legitimate course. I don’t believe that is what is intended or meant, however. I think the Obama Administration is determined to prosecute Wilson regardless of what the investigation reveals, because it does not have the integrity or courage to oppose the mob, and “liberals” like Bragona.
Then I read about Isis beheading photo-journalist James Foley, and their threat to kill another American if Obama doesn’t capitulate to their demands. As the two situations began to coalesce as a blog post in my fevered brain, Chris Marchener posted what follows, making my post superfluous.
Here is his Comment of the Day on the post, Ethics Train Wrecks Collide, As The Redskins And Trayvon Martin’s Mother Board The Ferguson Express:
I took pains not to link these events to terrorism but in light of the brutal beheading of the photo-journalist James Foley a case can be made. The comparison is simple. ISIS states that unless the US does as it demands it will suffer more beheadings of the remaining captives. A Missouri state senator, Jamilah Nasheed, said if the officer is not indicted tomorrow by the Grand Jury the riots that occurred recently will look like a picnic compared to the havoc that will come. (I think I got the quote right but it is not in quotes because I got it from an audio source).
Such statements can be interpreted as cautionary or as a threat. I will bet that any riots that break out will be explained as just cautionary and justified as “understandable” by her. Her word however carry a different message to her constituents; those words will have been heard as a call to action by the rioters. If US policy is not to negotiate with terrorists then we cannot concern ourselves with the behavior of malcontents in determining sound decisions that pass Constitutional muster.
If the Grand Jury finds that probable cause does not exist from the facts the people – not the government – came to that conclusion and the rest of us have to accept it. If the Grand Jury factors in the threat of violence and an indictment is returned then the Grand Jury system has been obliterated by those seeking to profit from the threats of violence. What exactly will we be left with if our judicial system cannot be trusted? Vigilante justice.
I am appalled at the rhetorical behavior of those whose name is preceded by the “Honorable” when they engage in the deliberate inciting of violence when they don’t get their way.
The protesters want an indictment of officer Wilson not because of what happened but because it represents as an indictment against to system that they want to invalidate and a validation of their claim that the criminal behavior of many young poor men (of all colors) is somehow justified and rational. I would ask how many indictments of white officers will be necessary make the black community feel no longer oppressed by the police and the criminal justice system?
In my hypothetical solution, I posited that if they can never trust the police no matter what then the police should simply be defunded and leave these people to protect themselves.
If I were a white police officer I would be looking for a new line of work when our elected officials are so quick to disavow the due process requirement in favor of racial preferences of the electorate.
There is no leadership on this issue.
_______________
Source: Politicus USA, Washington Post
Ethics Alarms 
Those of us who never think twice about whether or not we’re being trailed in a department store, never wonder if we didn’t get a job because we are white, never questioned if the reason we were pulled over because we are white, can never truly understand the concept of white privilege that exists.
So it should come as no surprise that when an unarmed man is shot six times, the police officer vanishes, the emergency vehicles aren’t called, no call of back-up is made, no sign of struggle is shown, the victims clothes are not released, the officer’s condition is not released, that yes, a few may be skeptical. Like me. And I’m white.
Ethically, why is it that the demands of those who want to know what the hell went on there are unethical, but your quick dismissal of them as merely wanting indictment of an officer is not? Do you know more facts about this incident than you’re letting on? If so, please enlighten us. Otherwise, you’re no different than those speculating the other way — like me. Then again, I don’t write a column on ethics.
Boy, now I question your reading ability. I have been scrupulously clear that I have no idea what occurred, and I am not marching, chanting and rioting for “justice” for Officer Wilson, meaning, as code, that he should be exonerated because obviously any black kid is a dangerous thug, and if he was shot, he asked for it. THAT would be the equivalent position to the civil rights establishment, journalists, and the demonstrators in Ferguson. I’m not making up the demand for Wilson to be punished because he is presumptively a killer as a white cop—you are disingenuous, or confused. That is what is being demanded, by the family, by the protesters, by Justin Barogona. In contrast, I’m demanding that the protesters stop trying to warp the justice system and due process by threatening violence if the process doesn’t produce the result they want. But that’s not the “justice” the protesters are after, because they say so.
This has made a fair and trustworthy process impossible, do you comprehend that? Conflict of interest is everywhere.
The facts are not as one-sided as you represent them. I’d say the fact that Wilson has fractured face bones is a “sign of a struggle,” for example. I’d say that the narrative of a previously competent cop firing multiple times at an unarmed man in open view of multiple witnesses is pretty weird, and that there’s clearly a lot we don’t know. Is that too biased for you? You can’t seriously claim that the protesters haven’t made up their minds about Wilson’s guilt…are you really doing that? Because that would require incredible selective reading, hearing and viewing.
I referred to the polls. Yes, I unequivocally condemn anyone who claims to know that Wilson “executed” Mike Brown, or that Wilson was racially motivated to do so. And that’s exactly what is being done, if Baragona and others are correct that arresting and charging Wilson would end the violence. Rather, absent more evidence than we have now, such a result should inflame any citizens seeking actual justice, since indicting someone without proof is a breach of law and justice itself. If that can be done, no one is safe. That’s mob rule, Kevin. Yes, I oppose mob rule, and I reflexively oppose anything a mob demands because a mob demands it. I would tell the mob that there will be no action taken regarding Wilson until the mob clears the streets.
Suspicion isn’t proof, and bias against white cops isn’t legitimate or rational analysis. I want an indictment, if it comes, to be based on facts, not coercion and cynical political calculations, and make no mistake, the charges against George Zimmerman were based on exactly that, and no more. That’s why he was acquitted, and why the prosecution was embarrassing. Maybe George is a racist, and maybe he murdered Trayvon, but no evidence showed that. But the mob insisted that he be tried, and so he was. Interpreting the Ferguson mess in light of that fiasco is neither unreasonable nor unfair.
I resent your characterization of my position, which has been clearly articulated, and involves only my biases against mob rule and racial-politics, both of which I abhor, as should you. And spare me the idiotic white privilege garbage. Deciding someone is guilty of murder and railroading him into court and jail before enough proof has been gathered is wrong, and horribly wrong, and no life experience, however scarring and unfair, can justify it. Those who are treated unjustly should be given a pass to treat others as badly—that’s your theory?
No wonder you don’t write an ethics blog.
Well said, Jack! In my four-decade police career, I’ve seen the mob’s “No Justice, No Peace” extortion attempt numerous times, but we seem to be growing closer to an era when it might just prevail.
The facts are not as one-sided as you represent them. I’d say the fact that Wilson has fractured face bones is a “sign of a struggle,” for example.
I keep reading this claim around the web, yet I can’t find who the original source for this is, nor has any traditional media claimed this. Did the police release or leak Wilson’s medical records, or did he release it himself? I would think they would, as it would at least put the officer in a more sympathetic light (even if it doesn’t conflict with anyone’s story so far), but I haven’t seen any X-rays or doctor’s notes detailing Wilsons injuries. I have seen videotapes and pictures taken in the aftermath of the incident, and he is walking around, and he looks fine, and unbruised, so it is curious to me that the fractured face thing is only surfacing now.
Stipulated: the manner in which the police have released all of the information is incompetent, suspicious, manipulative and stupid.
Why don’t we have the officer’s official statement? Why haven’t his injuries—as it appears that he was injured—been revealed officially? Why was the video of the alleged robbery withheld? You won’t get any defense of this conduct from me.
Oh, I was just wondering if there was some solid leads on that, or if it was just chatter. All the sources I looked at just point back to each other, and don’t have any accompanying documents to authenticate the claims, so I was hoping that someone else knew where to look.
I agree, as well. Every American citizen – white, black, rich, poor, Republican, Democrat – should be appalled at the disregard for due process that is being promoted here.
I have no idea what happened that day in Ferguson because I didn’t see the incident from start to finish. From what I can tell, neither did most of the eyewitnesses. I’m willing to consider that Officer Wilson might be a psychopath who stopped two men on the street because they were black and murdered one of them in broad daylight for no apparent reason all the while not knowing how many witnesses there were or how many of them had a cell phone camera/video recorder at the ready.
But I don’t know that’s what happened. It’s also possible that Michael Brown panicked when he was stopped by Officer Wilson, assumed he was going to be arrested for the convenience store robbery. launched an attack on him and was killed in self-defense.
I have no way of knowing which version is true. And neither does anyone else. Not the protesters in Ferguson, not Al Sharpton and not that increasingly-alarming and irresponsible Governor Jay Nixon. A thorough investigation has to be conducted.
And that investigation is being impeded by those who don’t want to see any evidence that calls into question their strongly-held belief that Michael Brown was ruthlessly murdered for Walking While Black. The mob is threatening the peace and safety of their own community unless their demands are met: the arrest (and presumed trial and conviction as I doubt any of us believes that a not guilty verdict will be acceptable to this crowd) of a man who is being presumed guilty while the investigation is still ongoing. Is there anyone in this country who would want to be arrested just because a mob of people is so certain of guilt that they will destroy their own neighborhoods to make sure it happens?
That’s a frightening prospect that faces any American citizen if this is allowed to continue.
Kevin
The reason that “Those of us who never think twice about whether or not we’re being trailed in a department store, never wonder if we didn’t get a job because we are white, never questioned if the reason we were pulled over because we are white,” is not that we cannot ever truly understand the concept of white privilege that exists, it is because we have not been indoctrinated into believing that everyone is against us and our own behavior should never be considered as part of our own lack of success by people that claim to be our leaders.
The irony in this is that the unsubstantiated claim of ongoing prejudice by the white community against the those living in poor minority communities is no different than having the unsubstantiated belief that whites are somehow superior.
Prejudice is prejudice. The claim of white privilege is a useful tool for those that want to perpetrate the myth that whites are rarely mistreated by police or are not viewed with suspicion by shopkeepers. It is no different than perpetuating the myth that blacks are “shiftless, lazy and dishonest” I remember being accosted by a white store clerk who demanded I empty my pockets because he thought I was shoplifting (I am white). That was in 1968. At the age of 12, I was scared so I did as instructed and proved my innocence. I didn’t mouth off and act belligerently. At 16, I got my license and a job. I wanted a car, saving my money until I could. Nonetheless, I was pulled over by the Baltimore City Police more than a few times for no apparent reason when I was out late at night. They always asked what I was doing and where I was going but never gave me a ticket. So where was my privilege?
It was my parents that taught me to respect the police and other adults. They explained to me that the police are just trying to keep people safe. I was taught to be courteous and respectful of authority and how to work to change things that I felt were unfair.
Today, I would question if my race or gender played a role in not getting a job I applied for if I knew that the successful applicant was a minority or female with less experience. However, that would not justify an actionable claim of discrimination for I am white and male which is not a presumptive condition for an EEO claim. Only women and minorities have that privilege. Perhaps it is an effective tool to level the economic playing field but so is staying in school, gaining the best understanding of the world in which you live, working to find effective solutions to peoples problems that they will pay money to obtain, and being respectful and courteous to all people.
To be fair, what if the color of the policeman was unknown or was a black officer would there be such outrage at the protocols followed by the police department. The fact is that the civil unrest began within 24 hours of the shooting; hardly enough time to do much investigation. After the unrest began, the department had to deploy most of its resources to contain the unrest leaving some citizens unprotected and hampering the investigation. There is a good reason that the clothes were not released to the family’s paid consultant – the chain of custody would be broken and could be argued in court that it was tainted. This would be grounds for a excluding the clothes as evidence against the officer. Is that what you want? The police officer did not vanish he is in hiding because of the death threats to him and his family. Perhaps the medical condition of the officer could have been disclosed earlier but what would that accomplish? Would just saying he has a fractured occipital lobe be enough or would it necessarily have to show his face and his wounds to be believed. That would really benefit a guy who is receiving death threats – show his face so that some nut job can go gunning for him.
No one is dismissing the community’s demand to know get to the truth, but the community cannot expect to be given every tidbit of information until the conclusion of an investigation that is fair to all parties concerned.
The unintended consequence of the civil unrest is that fewer businesses will want to locate in that community resulting in fewer economic opportunities for the young black males which will keep them mired in a lower socioeconomic condition.
The community should be asking this question: What would have been the outcome if Michael Brown, when told to get out of the middle of the street, said “sure officer, have a great day”. Even if the officer has racial animus in his core, I doubt the outcome would have been the same.
Kevin, you might also want to consider the effect this is having on communities and police departments all over the country. The next time a situation involving a minority offender comes up in, say Nebraska, what might go through the police officer’s mind as they confront a suspect?
I can think of several possibilities. None of them are good. Police will either be more intimidated by the possibilities of the confrontation going bad, or more aggressive. That means the innocent are more at risk than before and the guilty are as well. We are all less safe. When the police are unable to do their job effectively people may decide to take the law into their own hands. I don’t know how you feel about that possibility, but it certainly scares me.
Wyogranny, liberals aren’t known for mapping out unintended consequences. Can you explain it in emotional terms?
@ Chris, and this is a serious question. Do you believe that, (and I’m assuming you’re referring to black folks) blacks are indoctrinated into believing that everyone is against us and our own behavior should never be considered for our lack of success. Even if you stand by this rather harsh statement, I’m not clear on the connection to the obvious and well documented existence of white privilege. Your post also assumes that black parents don’t teach their children to respect the police. The reality is that black parents teach their kids that any dealings with the police could potentially go wrong, and you could wind up in jail, or worse. History and personal dealings have taught us this reality. Yet each time an incident like Ferguson happens, we’re asked to view it in a vacuum. To suspend our personal history, and give the benefit of the doubt to the police. “Wait for the facts to come out”. “You weren’t there, and don’t know what happened”. The rioting and looting is bullshit. But this too is a learned response. I’ll remind you that in likely the most celebrated case of police brutality, the rioting in LA didn’t occur until the police were acquitted. Blacks are rightly suspicious of delays in information because it rarely signals a full and impartial investigation, but an attempt (usually successful) to denigrate the victim and get the story straight. This is what our experience has taught us. The fact that you’ve been followed by a shop keeper or pulled over by the cops should not be used as justification for their behavior and treatment of minorities. It’s not the same. Ask anyone of color that you feel comfortable speaking to. They will have numerous examples to share with you, and many of them, first hand accounts.
I think the correct way of putting it is that the past experiences of African Americans as well as the undeniable persistence of individual and institutional bias against blacks can make it difficult, if not impossible, for an African American to assess whether a bad turn of events is due to racism or bigotry, or not. No, I can’t imagine living under such conditions: I suspect it would drive me crazy. Add to that affirmative action and white paternalism, so many blacks also can’t be certain whether a GOOD turn of events was based on racial biases as well, and you have all the elements required for justified paranoia.
I’m a bit surprised to hear you admit that Chris is right. You state that he assumes black children are not taught to respect the police – and then go on to assert that they are taught to fear them. That the police are potential threats to their liberty and safety. Contrast that to the teachings that the police have rightful authority over them, that they need to be polite and accommodating – while still recognizing that the police are humans doing a difficult job, and that some of them use that authority poorly.
The first child, when becoming a teenager, will likely respond to interactions with the police with hostility, with anger, with fear. the second will smile to the officer and be genuinely polite, if cautious. Which one stands the greater risk of having a gun pulled on them?
So, yes. Indoctrination that the system is rigged against them, that white people have a mysterious ‘privilege’ which protects them from social harm, and that they are bearing a burden they may not have even felt – that kind of indoctrination happens, and it ill-serves youth of any race. Furthermore, it’s a self-fulfilling prophesy: ANYONE who goes through life snarling and certain that everyone is out to get him will find ample evidence to support that conclusion.
So, yes. Indoctrination that the system is rigged against them, that white people have a mysterious ‘privilege’ which protects them from social harm, and that they are bearing a burden they may not have even felt – that kind of indoctrination happens, and it ill-serves youth of any race.
I don’t think it is something which really needs to be taught, it simply is. I read a quote recently which said, “black people believe in police abuse the same way they believe in rain, because they’ve felt it.” I think when you have recordings of police bosses instructing the officers on the street to stop even more black and Hispanic youths, when a whole swath of cases in LA end up getting overturned and prisoners released because it turns out that officers there routinely just made up crimes and evidence, when an unarmed family in Louisiana is fired upon, and the police department collude with each other to cover it up, then intelligent people can draw their own conclusions. Those are instances in which we have incontrovertible proof, but they are probably thousands of incidents that people can add to the list. Not to mention the routine petty abuses of power that many police officers allow themselves to indulge in. I cannot so cavalierly invalidate the lived experiences of millions of people.
Are all police officers abusive? Certainly not. Even most? No, I don’t think so. And how many otherwise good police officers look in the other direction and/or actively cover up for the sins of their colleagues? And how many instances does one need to for it not to be an individual problem of a rogue officer or two gone wild, but an institutional problem?
But surely you see that this is exactly the reasoning behind racial profiling? It’s not that “most blacks are violent, or criminals, or likely to be engaged in criminal activity”, but that experience has shown many members of the group do behave this way, and thus the prudent approach is to be wary of all members of the groups as if they are likely to behave this way? Surely you see that this becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, and if an individual member of a group knows that he will always be distrusted—feared–hated–regarded as with suspicion—by a member of another group, he will be defensive and defiant in dealing with this group?
Here, let me rephrase for you:
“Are all blacks dangerous and prone to criminal activity? Certainly not. Even most? No, I don’t think so. And how many otherwise law abiding African Americans look in the other direction and/or actively cover up for the sins of their fellow group members? And how many instances does one need to for it not to be an individual problem of one or two African Americans defying the laws, but a community and cultural pathology?”
Second attempt:
<But surely you see that this is exactly the reasoning behind racial profiling? It’s not that “most blacks are violent, or criminals, or likely to be engaged in criminal activity”, but that experience has shown many members of the group do behave this way, and thus the prudent approach is to be wary of all members of the groups as if they are likely to behave this way?…. And how many otherwise law abiding African Americans look in the other direction and/or actively cover up for the sins of their fellow group members?
There are several key differences that make such a comparison moot in my opinion. One of the most important is that race is an immutable characteristic, policing is not. We could conceivably fire every law enforcement official tomorrow and start fresh. There is nothing intrinsic to police work, it is something people choose to do. Therefore, it is only proper to ask is there something about people who choose to go into police work that makes some of them more likely to abuse the power that we have given them? How do we weed out such individuals from this occupation? How does one weed out bad actors from the black community (that would be any different than how any other race weeds out their own bad actors?)
Black people routinely denounce black on black crime, the “stop snitching” movement, crime in general, “kids these days” in general, etc. Black people routinely call the police on other black people, testify against other black people, serve on juries that send black people to jail. Routinely. Can we say the same of police officers?
Surely you see that this becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, and if an individual member of a group knows that he will always be distrusted—feared–hated–regarded as with suspicion—by a member of another group, he will be defensive and defiant in dealing with this group?
It is not a self-fulfilling prophecy. One action lead directly to another action (perhaps you are going for a self-perpetuating cycle?). But another key difference is that we do not give black people’s words regarding incidents any greater weight than that we give to any other race (a bit less, I would argue, but that is something for another day). Black people aren’t given any directives to act in concert with other black people across the county, state, or country. We have seen over and over again that black people have been explicitly targeted by police departments and other law enforcement agencies. As near as I can tell, there haven’t been any secret “get whitey” meetings that black people have been obligated to attend on fear of being ostracized or losing their jobs. The police cannot say the same.
Besides skin color, which is not chosen, any ties that black people have to each other are, at the end of the day, voluntary. They all should be seen as individuals. Police officers put on a uniform explicitly so they are not seen as individuals, but entities of the institution which has hired them. We don’t give black people greater rights and obligations than what we give any people of any race. We don’t give black people the authority to use deadly force as a matter of course in their day to day lives. Black people are not expected to receive deference and submission from other people during routine interactions: http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/08/19/im-a-cop-if-you-dont-want-to-get-hurt-dont-challenge-me/ (talk about your fascism!) We give police officers these things. And in return, they should be held to a higher standard. If they cannot fulfill this higher standard, then they should find a different line of work. Unfortunately, we cannot get black people who act up to choose another race. It doesn’t really work like that.
Was your initial post better than the recreation? Hard to believe. Some very valid points….
That was considerably better than the one I lost, and my slam dunk rebuttal of the earlier version is no longer sufficient. Damn! Now I’m really sorry.
I have faith in you Jack. I stand ready to read your rebuttal!!
Urban:
I appreciate your response. You are right, I was not there and I do not know what happened and neither was most everyone else weighing in on this.
You validated my point when you said “The reality is that black parents teach their kids that any dealings with the police could potentially go wrong, and you could wind up in jail, or worse.” That is not teaching respect, that is teaching fear and prejudice of the police. Now, that may be a legitimate concern from past behavior of police forces but teaching kids that they always have to avoid them out of fear is irresponsible when young males feel they must run when a police officer asks them to do something. What do you think that suggests to the officer? Or, the young black male feels he must be confrontational with police during a period of their lives that involves increasing levels of testosterone. They won’t be dissed and they sure as hell don’t want to be emasculated especially by anyone white.
Having grown up in a black community I have experiences that other do not have and others have experiences that I do not have. That is the nature of life. I had black friends and white friends. I do know that all of us avoided the “element” because that is what our parents taught us. We did not get caught up in the activities of the social misfits.
In one of my first jobs out of college, (1987) I worked for a community development corporation called COIL on Carrolton Avenue. Later COIL became ACORN. In that capacity I worked with merchants in the West Baltimore Street area from Caton Avenue to the UMD Shock Trauma center. Merchants were small business people from the community as well as entrepreneurs from outside the community. It did not matter whether the business was owned by a Rastafarian dressed in a traditional dashiki sporting the traditional black, green, and red knit cap covering the dreadlocks, or the white owner of the local florist that dressed in a suit and tie every day. Much of my time was spent at their locations giving business assistance. There was never an issue of needing to follow people around the store. However, one of the big challenges that plagued the stores was the perception that the community was dangerous. This had an adverse effect on getting people from outside the area to shop in these stores and bring in much needed capital. On one occasion, a local news report talked of a murder on Fulton Ave and simply called it a West Baltimore street. I called the radio station to have them report it correctly because people would think the murder occurred on West Baltimore and explained how the generic use of the street name could have an adverse economic impact on the community. At Christmas, I worked long into the night with Littlepages Department Store owners crafting decorations that would dress up the street during the holidays.
We tried to get locals to participate in cleaning up the street but to a person they all claimed that was the city’s job. So we had to choose, broken bottles and trash or a little hard work; we chose the latter. The outcome of our work lasted less than a week. We stopped doing it because it too was a learned response. I was also the editor of the Community Voice newspaper (distribution 25,000). We crafted stories extolling the positive elements in the community. We highlighted people that took great care of their homes but we also shamed property owners that failed to keep up their properties. I often found the paper discarded in the gutters along Pratt and other streets in the neighborhood.
I left that job for two reasons. The primary reason was that the community Board of Directors became not a catalyst for change but a corrupt group of people bent on amassing more power and resources from the city. I listened to the strategy sessions on how they planned to claim disproportionate impact of resource allocation. I saw how the Executive Director was enriching himself at the expense of the community. I was asked to twist the truth to Marion Pines (Dragon Lady), Baltimore’s chief urban development officer, when our funding was threatened. Ultimately,
I became disillusioned as did many of the professionals working to make life better when the power elite in that community as well as the local citizens had no interest in changing the current state of affairs.
History is a wonderful thing when interpreted as it truly occurred. However, in my 58 years on this planet, nothing I ever wanted came without sacrifice. It is not me or other whites that level the epithet being an Uncle Tom when blacks adopt a successful integrated work/life balance that mirrors what works for successful whites. It is not the majority of the white community that comes into low income areas and tag the buildings with our gang colors and vandalizes the schools. It was not the white community’s gangs killing little black girls as they played in the park or other members of black community. It is not our fault that black and Latino kids are not excelling in schools when those schools are administered and run by members of the same race, as demanded by the minority citizens that make up the neighborhoods, who also get more state and local tax money per pupil in those districts in the form of Title Seven and Nine pass through appropriations.
Take your complaints to those that are charged with getting the job done. I had no computer to learn to read, write, or compute basic arithmetic functions. I did not have a calculator until I was in finance classes at the University of Baltimore. I had no IPod or cellphone as a child or even as a young adult. I had no community organizer to rationalize away my failing geometry class nor was my score normalized to create an illusion of success.
I was never told the world was against me nor did I let a few negative personal experiences as I interacted in the world color my thinking that reinforced such beliefs. I was in Baltimore when the riots occurred in 68. I was beaten severely for being white and my property was taken by some black kids much older bigger and stronger than I. I was robbed of my newspaper collection money by a black kid on Chinquapin Parkway but I did not make those experiences control my overall sentiments. I knew of the white thugs. They come in all varieties shapes and forms. The biggest difference I see today is that urban youths (black white and Latino) are more likely to be packing heat than in my day.
It is very easy to claim white privilege from anecdotal experiences that are not quantifiable and never done in a controlled environment. If you walk into a store predisposed to believing you are being constantly watched, then you will leave the store with the same feeling. You then share that feeling with other like minded individuals and you begin to reinforce that belief. It becomes a self validating form of vindication even if the intent was to shoplift.
You said:” Yet each time an incident like Ferguson happens, we’re asked to view it in a vacuum. To suspend our personal history, and give the benefit of the doubt to the police. “Wait for the facts to come out”. “You weren’t there, and don’t know what happened”. The rioting and looting is bullshit. But this too is a learned response.
Learned response is a two way street. Running from the police is interpreted as trying to avoid punishment of wrongdoing. Police will chase those on the run because they think you are a risk to everyone else in the neighborhood. They are charged with protecting people not locking up as many blacks as possible. Think about it. Why in the hell would white police officers want to lock up every black person possible at a cost of $27,000 a year to incarcerate them. Another learned response is that if product shrinkage due to theft is prevalent in an area the business moves to a new area and local employment opportunities are lost. If being watched in stores is felt, that too could be a learned response by the shopkeeper. If someone feels that racial prejudice exists because they were being stopped by the police after being seen leaving a suspected narcotics dealers stash house then perhaps a little introspection is in order.
I never asked anyone to give the benefit of the doubt to the police. I stated that any Grand Jury that levels an indictment that is influenced by the threat of violence undermines the entire due process system. Demanding justice is fine but there are rules that protect the alleged suspect. No one gets to make up the rules to fit their own agenda on the fly simply because of some past perceived injustice.
Consider the effect if we throw out due process in favor of “getting justice”. That would mean the police could round up every gang banger and execute them at will. Security in the hood will be established but a lot of innocents will be caught up in roundup.
I closed my sentiments saying what if Michael Brown had simply said to the officer when told to stop walking down the middle of the street, “sure thing officer, have a great day”. I bet the outcome would have been substantially different.
In an age of grievance mongering my solution is simple stop teaching people to fear the police, be respectful, gain an education so you can confront injustice from a position of intellectual strength and not from emotional hyperbole.
Again thanks for your input. You helped me clarify some thoughts.
Hmm… can a comment on a post in which you were flagged for producing the COTD itself qualify as a COTD?
Yes.
They are charged with protecting people not locking up as many blacks as possible. Think about it. Why in the hell would white police officers want to lock up every black person possible at a cost of $27,000 a year to incarcerate them.
Argh! Only someone with a fair amount of racial privilege could say that, in the face of clear recordings we have of police officers being ordered to do just that. http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/ordered-secret-recording-stop-and-frisk-young-blacks-males-article-1.1295665 All the respect and politeness in the world would not stop a black male in that area from being unfairly targeted.
It is a perverse incentive as far as arrests and prison goes. We, as a society, pay to lock someone up. But police officers are often evaluated on the amount of their arrest numbers, and private prisons lobby to increase the numbers of prisoners that are sent to them. So arrests increase, people pursue quotas, and we pay for it all. There is a reason why the US has one of the highest prison populations in the world, more than China, more than Russia. It is a systematic problem, not an individual one.
As you know, individual examples of corruption and misconduct cannot be used for generalizations like that. The roots of bigotry.
But it isn’t an individual example. At the very least, everyone in that precinct was under those orders. And given that 90%+ of the stop and frisks in NYC were given to men of color, it seems that the entire city was under those orders as well, or at the very least a verrry strange coincidence. So I ask again, at what stage does it stop being an individual problem, and become an institutional one?
When there is no persistent pattern of conduct that encourages the problematical policies and response perhaps?
I guess I don’t get it. People being given direct orders from higher-ups to discriminate against black people is still an “individual problem?” A concerted policy throughout an entire city is still an individual problem? The Rampart scandal in LA, where officers routinely framed suspects and planted evidence, with the full knowledge of their supervisors, is an individual problem? What is your definition of an institutional problem?
So Jack, how many “individual examples would you like me to offer before a legitimate pattern is established?
Deery,
You quoted me and attributed a substantial amount of white privilege to me.
I forgot to mention one of my experiences from 1990-1995,after leaving West Baltimore was to direct the community college operations at the correctional centers in Hagerstown. I took on the system that used programming solely to keep idle hands out of mischief. I consolidated operations into one preferred less hostile environment saving taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars. I taught students economics, finance, and small business management. I listened to them. I counseled them. I got them to believe that they had potential opportunities and how to go about achieving goals. I fought for those wanting to change their lives. I fought against the tide of sentiment that inmates should not be afforded a taxpayer funded grant when the children of the correctional officers could not get the grants. Our goal was to eliminate our the need for our services in that environment. Our program was held up by the US Department of Education as a model program because I established high expectations and those committed to education met them. It cut recidivism four-fold. However that program ended when Bill Clinton signed the Omnibus crime bill or 1995 which eliminated funding for those incarcerated in state penitentiaries. Funding was reinstated for inmates in federal prisons.
I have sat down with people of all colors black, Hispanic, and white that only knew whites in authority as their oppressors for that is what they have been taught. I showed them how to evaluate their own behavior in terms of economic costs and benefits. I sat with them and talked with them, one-on-one for five years I probably have a better understanding of what prompted their aversion to legal activities than most people. This included men that committed murder, armed robbery, narcotics trafficking and a host of other violent crimes. I wasn’t just putting in time to collect a paycheck. I gave them help when they needed it, and I will help anyone interested in changing their own lives for the better.
Forgive me if I come at this with a different perspective than you. But please don’t claim that I have some white privilege. I’ve been out of work for extended periods of time like many others but that never stopped me from working to make my own life better and I never felt that I was above trying to make a difference for others because of my race.
I thought it might be helpful to provide a definition of “white privilege” by one who has studied the topic for a number of years. Peggy McIntosh describes it this way:”white privilege is like an ‘invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, maps, codebooks, passports, visas, clothes, tools and blank checks’ which can be used at any moment.
I think privilege is just a below-the-belt white guilt trigger, essentially meaning “you don’t deserve any credit for what you accomplish, and I get a lifetime free pass for failing.” Everybody has some good breaks and bad ones…a middle class fat white kid whose father is an alcoholic and whose mother is abusive is no more privileged than a poor black kid with loving parents, good health and a talent for music. Blaming life on luck is neither productive nor admirable. You play the hand you’re dealt the best you can, not hurting others as you go, and being accountable. I’ve had a lot of advantages–some with fewer have lapped me; some with more have crashed and burned. Skin color or gender aren’t destiny any more than anything else. My dad was dirt poor, abandoned by his father, went to fight in WWII and got his foot half blown off. I’m pretty sure he’d laugh his head completely off at the suggestion that he had an ‘invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, maps, codebooks, passports, visas, clothes, tools and blank checks’ which can be used at any moment. Yeah, he made a lot of those things for me. Presumably there are also great black dads, just not nearly enough of them…I think that’s a far more legitimate field of inquiry than measuring “privilege.”
Privilege isn’t destiny, but it certainly is an advantage. Some privileges are earned, like educational privileges, and some you are born into, like class privilege, skin color privilege, and sex privileges. And privileges can and do intersect with each other, and can change depending on contexts. Almost everyone has one or more privileges, and it is important to realize what they are, and be aware that not everyone shares those particular privileges.
My dad was dirt poor, abandoned by his father, went to fight in WWII and got his foot half blown off. I’m pretty sure he’d laugh his completely head off at the suggestion that he had an ‘invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, maps, codebooks, passports, visas, clothes, tools and blank checks’ which can be used at any moment.
But we have detailed in previous posts some of the white privileges that your father enjoyed at the time that a similarly situated black soldier could not have enjoyed. It is absurd to say that a white man in the 40’s and 50’s was not the beneficiary of some rather strong white privileges. Your father could travel freely throughout the United States, while many returning black soldiers were lynched for being “uppity”, under suspicions they had slept with white women overseas. Your father was able to use his GI Bill to go to college, while a huge number of colleges would not admit black people until the 60’s/70’s. Your father was able to use his veteran’s benefits to buy a house, while black people, even if they had the means, could not do so because of redlining and racial covenants. He could then pass some of those benefits along to you. Your father might have laughed at the term, but he nonetheless benefited from it all the same.
He had some disadvantages, others have different ones. It is presumptuous to declare his situation unfairly beneficial, when it was was a struggle throughout. If I got shot by a police officer after resisting his authority, no Attorney General would speak to my parents in sympathy. Is that a privilege? I think that’s inequitable, but its just something I factor in to getting through life. My code book and knapsack didn’t help me when I lost out on an Asst. US Attorney job as a direct result of 1) affirmative action and 2) nepotism. Was that unfair? It just was, that’s all. I should have been better, that’s all. That’s life.
The point is that my father never cursed his bad luck or used it as an excuse. He never used his background to feel jealous or envious of those who had it easier, or to explain why he wasn’t rich or a big shot. He also never broke a law in his life.
Nothing you have described changes the basic rules of existance—you do your best, you help who you can on the way; you don’t get full of yourself, and you don’t alibi when you fail. Tall people have an advantage over short people, attractive people over ugly people, smart people over dumb people, talented people over average Joes. Nobody “understands” what those with a different mix of blessings and curses goes through to get to the finish line. I repeat–the privilege rhetoric is an insult to those it’s flung at, and a security blanket for those who need to believe that the cards are stacked against them…which they may be…and want to make sure everybody knows it. I think it’s weak and self-limiting. It also pisses off and alienates exactly those people that one should be recruiting as part of that knapsack.
I personally examine my privileges first when I am breezily answering the “why don’t people just…?” questions that pop up. e.g. Why are people poor? Why don’t they just find a better job? Why don’t people just go to college? Why don’t women just stay at home to raise their babies? Etc. Those questions often come from a place of unexamined privilege where I am not looking very hard at some barriers and built-in institutional biases that I may never even have thought about. Some are lack of information and plain-old ignorance, where I never had to look deeply about how tilted the playing field is in a particular arena.
I do think we as a society have a responsibility to “untilt” the playing field to make it as even for everyone as possible, which inevitably, will cause many who were enjoying the tilted playing field just fine to resent things being put on an even keel. If there are societal institutions and laws that contribute to the tilt, they should serve a very narrow and specific purpose, and there shouldn’t be a better way to perform the same function. If cards are stacked automatically against certain groups of people, are there commonsense ways to unstack them? Or must we throw up our hands, say, “Well that’s the way it always is,” and leave societal biases and discriminations untouched?
1. Who in their right mind asks those questions? The questions I ask are: why, if you are poor, do you waste money on lottery tickets rather than saving and investing? Why are you buying cars, TVs, smartphones and videogames rather than having books around for your kids to read, and getting job training? Why do you buy or sell drugs, and get arrested? Why do you have more children than you can afford, and why do you have kids with partners you can’t or won’t marry? Why do you break the law? I don’t see those as arising from privilege at all. They arise from common sense, observation, education and being able to add two and two.
2. You have articulated the permanent divide the the Left has made for itself: justice and fairness as outcomes, rather than the opportunity to play the cards you are dealt as best you can. It’s a nice dream, but a) it doesn’t work and b) it cripples those who can do the most to better society, and cripples society’s advancement as a consequence. You can’t make stupid people smart, untalented people talented, incompetent people competent, and short people tall; you can’t encourage ambition and enterprise and innovation and hard work without proportionate rewards, and you can’t insure against risk. It doesn’t work, that is, without seriously constraining human spirit and freedom…which is why the modern progressives increasingly tend toward authoritarian theories and methodology. If the dealer forces everyone to share the good cards, its a lousy game, and nobody will play it unless you force them to. And that’s what it will come down to: forcing them to.
Who in their right mind asks those questions? The questions I ask are: why, if you are poor, do you waste money on lottery tickets rather than saving and investing? Why are you buying cars, TVs, smartphones and videogames rather than having books around for your kids to read, and getting job training? Why do you buy or sell drugs, and get arrested? Why do you have more children than you can afford, and why do you have kids with partners you can’t or won’t marry? Why do you break the law? I don’t see those as arising from privilege at all. They arise from common sense, observation, education and being able to add two and two.
It sort of reminds me of that much derided article: If I Was A Poor Black Kid http://www.forbes.com/sites/quickerbettertech/2011/12/12/if-i-was-a-poor-black-kid/
The questions you ask do come from a place of privilege. What do many poor people know of saving and investing, and who is taking the time to teach them? What broker is taking their $5 account? What bank is allowing them to open up an account, especially with no fixed address, and credit possibly ruined before they even left childhood due to a parent using their SSN in attempt to keep vital utilities on? How can they get a legitimate job when they have been arrested so many times from being unfairly targeted by police (arrests show up on a background check, even if you haven’t been convicted)? Why wouldn’t poor people, when they have the opportunity, spend their money in exactly the same way the vast majority of the rest of Americans do? They don’t read books for the same reason the rest of America doesn’t read, they find it boring.Why do we hold them to a higher standard? When do poor people find the time, between juggling 2 or more minimum wage jobs to even go to job training, not to mention affording childcare when they do so? How can you afford birth control when you can’t even afford the doctor’s visit where you can get the birth control prescribed? You may want to formally marry your partner, but you realize that if you do, any benefits you have would be eliminated, yet he does not make enough to offset the loss.
Those are some reasons off the top of my head. People have literally written books answering some of these questions. Promises I Can Keep is a good book to start out with on this subject. Asking questions is fine, outside of our bubble, we are all often ignorant. But once you ask the questions, you have to be willing to impartially examine the answers, and question some of your assumptions. It’s only fair.
[If you keep writing comments like this, I’ll never get time to catch up with that comment I inadvertently deleted!]
1.The questions you ask do come from a place of privilege. What do many poor people know of saving and investing, and who is taking the time to teach them?
Come on. This is blatant excuse-making, denigrating to African Americans. Immigrant groups came to the is country with far less education that America’s blacks, not speaking the language, and had enough common sense to know that they should save their money. They learned that from their community, from their family, and from using their heads.
2. What broker is taking their $5 account? What bank is allowing them to open up an account, especially with no fixed address, and credit possibly ruined before they even left childhood due to a parent using their SSN in attempt to keep vital utilities on?
You and Urban need to get your facts coordinated. You seem to think the black population in the U.S. is still living “The Grapes of Wrath,” and he says the “vast majority” of blacks are in the Cosby Show. Which is it? He’s a lot closer than you are: most blacks are not poor, but middle class; most do not have criminal records. Brokers will take anyone’s money, and so will banks. I’d guess that the percentage of black Americans with fixed addresses is, oh, 99%? If the state of black America was as bad as you seem to think, it would, and should, be a national scandal, as well as reflecting frighteningly poorly on African American culture. But the black unemployment and poverty rates, while unacceptable, aren’t anywhere close to what that section of your comment suggests.
3. “How can they get a legitimate job when they have been arrested so many times from being unfairly targeted by police (arrests show up on a background check, even if you haven’t been convicted)?”
“Come on!” #3. Yes, police sneak into homes, plant evidence, and make sure that most blacks are framed for crimes. Of course having an arrest record makes it harder to get a job, and it should. For one thing, it usually means one isn’t too bright, can’t resist peer pressure, and doesn’t respect authority. Whites get too much of a break from the criminal justice system, the way I read the stats. But I processed cases in DC for a year: what I saw was a lot of black 20-somethings with multiple arrests (the vast, vast number of people arrested for crimes are guilty, you know: that’s the first shock you get as an idealistic defense attorney) and no jail time at all. Where do you get your impression of what’s happening out there? If someone has an arrest record, 1) they almost certainly deserve it, and 2) I don’t have a lot of sympathy for them, whatever their color. It just isn’t that hard to obey the law, and if “nobody is teaching them that,” I place the blame squarely on parents, where it belongs
4. Why wouldn’t poor people, when they have the opportunity, spend their money in exactly the same way the vast majority of the rest of Americans do?
Because it’s stupid, self-destructive and irresponsible? The same reason I don’t spend my money like Bill Gates: it makes no sense. Studies in the 70’s out of Harvard suggested that the modern poor often suffer from the inability to defer gratification, while the immigrant classes did exactly the opposite, making do with less non-essentials than the average middle class families while the accumulated assets…and those groups did it without any government checks or food stamps.
5.They don’t read books for the same reason the rest of America doesn’t read, they find it boring.Why do we hold them to a higher standard? When do poor people find the time, between juggling 2 or more minimum wage jobs to even go to job training, not to mention affording childcare when they do so? How can you afford birth control when you can’t even afford the doctor’s visit where you can get the birth control prescribed?
You know, your comments on this thread had been consistently perceptive and thought provoking, but for some reason you’re flying off the rails now. Surely you don’t believe this stuff! If you find it too boring to have a nurturing, intellectual environment for your kids to grow up in—having books around is recognized as a key indicia of future success—you are author of your own family’s destruction. If you don’t take the time and effort to learn, you aren’t getting out of poverty. Are you kidding? If my tax dollars are going to keep you clothed and fed, you forfiet the right to complain that I’m requiring you to be more responsible than those who don’t need the government’s assistance. Talk about an entitled attitude: when you are self-sufficient, I only expect you to stay out of my way. If you can be reletaively succesful wasting your money and staying ignorant, swell: good luck to you. But when you complain about your state in life while saying “Why shouldn’t I act as if I have more money than I have?”, well, that’s an indictment of YOU. So is having kids you can’t afford or raise properly in a stable family.
6. You may want to formally marry your partner, but you realize that if you do, any benefits you have would be eliminated, yet he does not make enough to offset the loss.
Yes, deery, that’s the reason black women have 75% of their children without getting married. “Come on!” #3
7. Those are some reasons off the top of my head. People have literally written books answering some of these questions.
Yes, and I’ve read those books, and those aren’t teh answers in them. I have no idea what books you’ve been reading. (Aren’t all books literally written?)
8. I am hardly unschooled on this topic: I studied it in college, and was thoroughly depressed by the social pathologies trapping blacks in poverty. I have kept up to date on it since. My wife was an executive in Eddie Robinson’s Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies.
9. “Promises I Can Keep” is a rationalization for destructive behavior. Another question I ask is: Why do people like you think it helps the situation to excuse self destructive behavior that perpetuates misery?
So what do you say to the overwhelming majority of black folks that,don’t break the law, buy as many books as they can afford, don’t sell drugs, work there ass off, may or may not have some degree of talent, play the cards that are dealt them (from the bottom of the deck in a lot of instances) do get married, or are otherwise in a committed relationship, and have 2.3 kids? To think that this doesn’t describe most black people is racist. And I don’t know you to be so. Why do whites get so angry anytime this subject is seriously discussed? And it’s anger! Is it because some honestly feel that blacks want to gain without the work, and at their expense? I can actually accept that. However, would urge those that may feel this way to re-examine these thoughts. Some of this is simply the cards you’re dealt and how well you play them. (here we go with card game analogies!) But it seems that some white folks are seriously offended at the notion of a black person achieving or having anything. So little is thought of blacks that, to have an iphone and be black must mean that you either stole it or sacrificed something of greater value to get it. Either way, until you’ve taken care of other priorities, get rid of it. Not even thinking that many of these people that have smartphones lack a computer and are actually stretching their money and making a “smart” decision (pun intended) in getting a robust phone that serves a duel purpose. I think that was a cheap shot Jack. As to your second point, I won’t speak for the left, but will say that 99% of the blacks that I know, and have been around my entire life, don’t want anything more than a fair shot to achieve the same dream you do. They accept failures and disappointments at a disproportionate rate, yet still dream the dream, get up in morning and do the best they can. Like everyone else. The fact is that blacks are seen as “other”. Both sides make excuses either for achievement as an exception, or granted based on benevolent whites. At the same time you, I believe sincerely wish for blacks to stand on their own two feet, see little need for affirmative action, you refuse to accept what overwhelming data, and first hand accounts tell you. Not because you don’t understand. Perhaps you should really listen. Really listen. That’s why I engage on this board. Hard as it is. I seek to better understand why people feel the way they do. We don’t have to get there today. But this thread is one of the most honest I’ve encountered. I can live with that regardless of weather I share the opinion or not….
I normally don’t respond to posts the next day, but just to clarify, I took your question at face value that we were talking about poor people, not black people, which are obviously two different things.
I thought we were talking about people who are poor because they aren’t privileged, in the specific context of race. You’re right…I jumped the curb there a bit. You had clearly shifted into more general poverty issues.
Also, while I’m breaking my own rule of thumb, the whole “but immigrants do it better, so they must have a better culture” thing is hogwash. You are comparing the extraordinary against the ordinary. Immigrants (especially from overseas) are not selected randomly to come to the US. Either they are picked for the extraordinary talents, or in the case of illegal ones they have to jump through many hoops and have great determination to leave behind their families, friends, and community to come over here. The ones who don’t have this drive stay in their original country.
But obviously immigrant culture overall isn’t any better, otherwise they wouldn’t be fleeing their own country and culture, filled with it’s own poverty. Why don’t they stay, and try to affect change from inside their own communities instead of cutting their losses and running? Well, because they have the option not to do that, and so they take it. Where exactly do the driven, ambitious black people in this country flee to escape their own poverty-stricken brethren? There isn’t another country to go to. If you wanted a fair comparison, you would look at the immigrants’ own native countries, and their cultures, that includes everyone that stays in he country, and I doubt you would be lauding it as loudly. It’s your basic apples and oranges set up.
I’m talking about the earlier immigrant cultures of the 19th and early 20th Centuries, like the Irish, Italians, Germans and Irish—and the Cambodian, Cuban and Vietnam immigrants more recently, who exhibited the exact save-and-sacrifice ethic that has been absent from the more recent lower-economic strata black culture. These were all discriminated against, and often had language impediments, and they climbed out of poverty into the middle class. There are other problems the African-Americans have that these groups didn’t have to cope with, including the lack of a rapidly expanding labor market, but the absence of deferred-gratification oriented culture for these groups is well-documented. It’s not hogwash at all.
“But obviously immigrant culture overall isn’t any better, otherwise they wouldn’t be fleeing their own country and culture, filled with it’s own poverty.” Come on—I don’t really have to explain the logical disconnect in THIS assertion, do I?
APOLOGY AND MEA CULPA: Deery left a substantial comment, and somehow, in the course of responding, I obliterated it. I have alerted deery, and apologized profusely. That’s never happened before, and I’m not even sure what I did. I am SO sorry.
Oh no! That was a really long one too! Oh well. Sigh. I will see if I can try to scrape it together again.
Oh no! That was a really long one too! Oh well. Sigh. I will see if I can try to scrape it together again.
**********
I’ve accidentally deleted my own posts.
Did you notice that the ones you lose are usually some of your best writing?
I feel your pain, deery.
Thanks Finlay. I think my new reply is about half the size of the old one, but is probably the better for it.
To all: I appreciate every response especially those disagree because it helps me understand.
If someone could help me understand the following would be much in their debt.
I often hear that social problems exist because programs aimed at social improvement fail to achieve the desired results and that program failure occurs because a program was not fully funded. Why is there never a value attached to what fully funded actually means. It seems to me that the use of such the term “fully funded” is deliberately amorphous so that any future failure can also be justified for the same reason.
The same hold true in this case. What exactly is the price to be paid for past injustices? Exactly who should pay and to whom should it be paid and why. Civil courts require the plaintiff to show direct or consequential damages stemming from the proven proximate cause to prevail. How does one prove the perception of community wide injustice actually occurred which is the proximate cause of an economic injury to any specific individual or community of people? How do you separate an individual’s own personal behaviors that led to the failure to maximize their own potential from that of the perceived or actual systemic injustice that is claimed to be the cause of a group’s collective failure to achieve economic parity with another group? Should undocumented testimonials of anecdotal experience from potential beneficiaries be valid evidence? If not, what evidence would be valid?
Perhaps the President and Mr. Holder can weigh in on answering this question. Maybe with that answered we can begin to work towards a meaningful long-term solution toward perceptions of equitable treatment.
Your question is valid, but requires much more space and study than this thread comfortably allows. A few quick thoughts though: 1) By most objective measures- home ownership, household income, net worth employment history etc, African Americans perform well below white and other demographic groups of the SAME education level. As the level of education increases, the gap narrows, but still exists. So are we to conclude that blacks are inherently inferior to whites at every level? If that’s the conclusion, racist as it would be, it would be more honest than simply accepting that the condition of blacks is based entirely on their own behavior, lack of work ethic, schooling, home training or whatever else. We like to think that there’s a level playing field. The person most qualified should get the job. Period. No other circumstance need apply or be taken into consideration. But discrimination is in fact real. At least as real as people being solely responsible for their lot in life, and this being the reason for the “lack of economic parity”. We’ve tried numerous solutions and none seem to work very well, or for very long. But we’re still a young country, and I remain optimistic. Hard as it is at times. I think we all share that sentiment to some degree. Even Jack the pessimist!
This is a comment thread and discussion worth having. @Chris, I do get where you’re coming from and appreciate your personal experiences, and the thoughts and opinions generated as a result of them. I try hard not to denigrate ones views on this board, but rather to explain why another point of view might be understandable, predictable and in some cases appropriate. To clarify an earlier point, its not that blacks are taught simply to fear the police. Children inherently trust adults, all adults as authority figures. This certainly applies to the police. I for one, have taken the exact approach you suggest- “yes sir, no sir, kept my hands in plain sight, and still was humiliated in front of my mother and future wife. This was done by not just one officer, but a significant portion of the police force (at least 10 cars) on a routine traffic stop. at the conclusion of the incident, I asked why they had simply not asked for my ID? Why I needed to be made to walk backwards in the middle of the street, with my hands up? Why I was forced to get down on my knees and be aggressively handled and handcuffed? The answer I received was and I quote “whoops”. No apology. The answer, I concluded was that they did it for sheer sport.
I have a parent that was a county prosecutor. We heard stories, plentiful ones of the cops lying, falsifying reports and abusing black victims. The word’s “he grabbed my gun” are met with a healthy amount of skepticism any time I hear them uttered, but especially when associated with a young suspect. Cops are trained to ( I would think) to properly secure their weapon. The chances, and instances of someone ( a child no less) successfully taking a gun from an officer and using it against him is rather low, as it should be. But the instances of this being the go to reason for excessive if not deadly force is disproportionate to the actual occurrences. In short, the cops are lying. My point to all this is black folks lives are at a greater degree of risk anytime we interact with the police. Because we accept this as fact, we teach our children, not to disrespect the police, but to be cautious, to be careful, and yes, to be scared. It would truly be irresponsible to teach black kids anything less.
@Jack, I get your point about this reaction being the same as racial profiling. The thought process is the same. But the similarity stops there. African Americans have no (well little) authority over the police. We can’t randomly hold them to account. We can barely hold them to account in situations where it’s justified. The police on the other hand, can act upon the object of their profile immediately, and in some instances make the circumstance fit whatever scenario they wish. Not a level playing field, but I do see the connection….
Excellent writing, folks.
I am horrified by the institutional bias and screwups. I wish these kinds of problems could and would be addressed without waving a particularly lightning-rod case. If it was wrong a week, a month, or ten years ago, why can’t all these outraged people hold their focus on real change when it’s not in the headlines for the latest outrage? Making change is not glamorous or exciting or cheap or quick and you can’t fix things by a few protests and petitions. Any stable system has a lot of inertia, for bad and excellent reasons. Negative inertia means the cumulative bias that should have been noted and addressed earlier is snowballing when disproportionate enforcement has reached a head. The positive aspect of inertia slowed and limits lynchings because there is trust in the law and enforcement.
Today we combine the viral hysteria with celebrities pandering to that, the worst of both sides. You cannot have a safe society with media/cyber lynchings any more than the fire and steel.
What I would like to see is two things: two investigations by different agencies. One, addressing the institutional and racial bias in law enforcement, especially in Ferguson, and how citizens of every race and color should feel safe in calling the police for help and less like a foreign insurgent with tanks and heavy weapons in play. People should not have to fear disproportionate reactions by police, stealing a couple cigars isn’t a death penalty level crime. This is the more important problem and affects far more places than this small town,
The other is an investigation of the actual crime, which is already hopelessly muddled by poor public relations. But Justice is blind, and the sword cuts both ways, sometimes the benefit of the doubt is frustrating the other way. Didn’t we hear some of the opposite speeches firing the OJ trial? No result of this investigation will make many happy, too many crimes and abuses of power have happened already. The best we can hope for this investigation and possible legal actions is to do it by the book and with all due process for victims of various attacks, protesters, and rioting.
Mob hysteria is not the answer, because they are many heads and no brains.
Urban
Thanks, we come at this from alternate viewpoints neither of which is a universal truth. I have had my share of police encounters most notably when 5 cars pulled me over after I left a night club. The officer informed me that he pulled me over because my lights were not on. The officer then told me that there was an odor of alcohol about me and that I needed to step out of the car . Even though I don’t drink and had no alcohol in the car I was petrified. All the flashing lights in the rain on a highway ramp at 2 am made me completely unable to concentrate on the directives regarding the field sobriety test. When I stumbled I knew I would be arrested as it was prima facie evidence of driving impaired. I regained my composure knowing that there could be no blood alcohol detected and asked to take the breathalyzer test. He tested me and when I asked what was the value he said I passed and that was it.
When I got home I realized that my lights come on automatically after dark and had them tested. They were working fine. The stop was an obvious pretext to stop anyone coming out of that club. I complained to the Frederick County DA because the cop issued me a ticket for failing to display the headlights even though it is impossible for me not to display the after dark unless a malfunction occurred. I pursued this in court and the officer admitted he had not actually seen whether my lights were on or not. I was livid going in to court having to waste my time to prove my innocence and to showcase the police action as improper. There is no doubt that your experience left you feeling humiliated. I too felt humiliated at the time, but I prevailed in court because I went prepared with documented facts.
The point I am making is that this happens frequently because the police are pressured to remove wrongdoers off the street and can make bad calls. This happened over ten years ago when gang violence was not heard of here. Today, you have to admit approaching any young man in a low income urban environment poses an elevated risk to law enforcement. Abuse of police power can happen to anyone and the responsible adult action to prevent future abuse is to seek redress as soon as possible after the incident but not during the incident.
By the way, I appreciated your comment on my earlier question. If Jack would be so kind as to give you my email address we could get into that issue further outside of Ethics Alarms.
Jack, permission granted. Thank you. One quick point and I’ll have to leave this alone till later- Crime is generally down, even in urban areas. A case could be made that it’s never been safer for cops to engage black youth. Also, it’s much harder to get guns in urban environments versus rural or suburban ones. This is a fact. Do a search on gun sales and zip codes and you’ll see what I mean. Now this is not to say that people in urban environments aren’t armed. A thug is a thug, and if one wants to get a gun, they’ll do so. Simply that the proximity to legal guns is not as great as one might think as it relates to urban environments….
This is a reply to Urban’s Comment above that begins as follows…..
So what do you say to the overwhelming majority of black folks that,don’t break the law, buy as many books as they can afford, don’t sell drugs, work their ass off, may or may not have some degree of talent, play the cards that are dealt them (from the bottom of the deck in a lot of instances) do get married, or are otherwise in a committed relationship, and have 2.3 kids?
I think I’d say that if the vast majority of black Americans fell into that category, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. (The vast majority of white Americans don’t fall in that category either.) Almost 50% of all Americans don’t pay federal income tax. Over 70% of black children are born out or wedlock—let’s just start with that problem. “To think that this doesn’t describe most black people” isn’t racist, it’s called accepting the unpleasant facts.
“Why do whites get so angry anytime this subject is seriously discussed?” I’m not sure which subject you mean. I get angry when legitimate, objective positions I’ve thought about—like, say, requiring identification for voters, or on a broader scale, concluding that Barack Obama is an atrocious leader by any standard—are characterized as racist. I get angry when black racism—and assuming all whites are hostile to blacks is bigotry—is accepted and adopted by the media and policy makers as legitimate. Surely you can understand why race-based policies that disadvantage Asians and whites cause anger from those on the losing end of the policies, although I don’t get angry about policies in this area that I disagree with, because I honestly don’t know that I have any better solutions.
I find the subject depressing more than anything else. I find the degree to which national unity, priorities and policies are warped and skewed by the necessity of cleaning up the social and cultural damage done by centuries of slavery and decades of Jim Crow is sad and discouraging. I don’t deny it’s necessary. I just am discouraged by its consequences, developing a African-American population that looks to the government for far more than 1) it can competently deliver and 2) is good for the future of their families and place in U.S. society. I find the failure of black leadership in this country to embrace MLK Jr’s call for the courage to engage in self-criticism especially discouraging. I see the NAACP becoming a racket, an increasingly shrill and radical force for divisiveness, and it doesn’t make me angry—I read Eric Hoffer, I know WHY this happens. But it’s tragic, because I don’t see the way out.
The worst part of my job is reading other websites and the comments on them, and the racial hate—mostly from whites, but some from blacks as well, perhaps proportional to demographics. I think, in the final tally, President Obama’s destructive influence on race relations will stand as the worst of his failures: there is no excuse for the first black President having that effect, but here we are. Yes, I guess I am angry about that.
Over 70% of black children are born out or wedlock—let’s just start with that problem. “To think that this doesn’t describe most black people” isn’t racist, it’s called accepting the unpleasant facts.
So let’s start here as you suggested. When this number is quoted, and I’ve seen it before, it serves the narrative that blacks are irresponsible, and, lacking any additional context is misleading. Out of wedlock births to black women, married or not is down considerably according to 2010 census data. I’m attaching two articles that explain it in better language than I can. http://www.timwise.org/2013/08/baby-mama-drama-explaining-conservative-deception-about-out-of-wedlock-births-in-the-black-community/. http://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2013/06/understanding-out-of-wedlock-births-in-black-america/277084/
I’ll be interested to see if you feel that either piece expands the narrative, has value, or simply is another excuse. The fact is, while not a flattering statistic, I see cause for hope, and after reading these articles, have a clearer understanding of exactly what this statistic really says. Am I in favor of increasing this number? No. I believe in marriage and stable families. It’s one reason why I don’t see gay marriage as the start of our moral decline. (Was well underway long ago but I digress) at the same time, children in two parent families will most certainly not solve issues of education and incarceration. But it most certainly stands to reason that children from such homes have a better chance at finishing school and staying out of jail. But let’s remember what started all this. When a cop sees a black person walking down the street, he doesn’t know a thing about his family background or level of education. Once you’re engaged with the police, it doesn’t matter who you are, or what you’ve done with your life.
I’m not likely to change your opinion on Obama and his impact on race, but it strikes me as odd the level of vitriol and criticism he gets for his performance on race. Few are happy with it on either side. In my mind, in not pleasing anyone, he’s done his job. The narrative is moving forward, and he models the behavior most seek. I don’t think history will judge him nearly as harshly as you have. But again, I digress.
On another note, I sent you an email last week. When you get a minute, I’d like to get your thoughts before I proceed. Thanks…
1. UR..I’m not seeing the relevance on the 70% stat. I didn’t cite it to prove moral decline or anything else. It’s obviously not good, and you stated that the majority of Africans Americans get married, and they don’t; moreover, the fact that they don’t is a problem. It’s been going up like a firecracker since the 60’s…forgive me if I’m dubious about the prospects of it coming down, especially since the same stat is going up for everyone else, too.
2. Obama personally has not been divisive on race, but he has allowed his subordinates and surrogates, and especially his party, to pursue what I would call the mirror image of the GOP Southern Strategy, and the damage has been terrible. It is not a coincidence that polls show racial distrust higher than it has been in decades
What I actually said was that they are married or otherwise in a committed relationship. This was purposely stated this way to account for the fact that marriage is an economic disincentive for many in the AA community, yet many (I contend most) do engage in long term domestic partnerships. If you didn’t cite it to speak to “moral decline or anything else” then I’m not sure what the relevance of it is at all, much less, a starting point. (again, your wording) The stat IS losing relevance because the actual birth rates are going down for all, many AA women raise productive college educated children alone (Mama urbanregor raised 3, finished undergrad, and law school) rather than deal with certain men, and the stigma attached to pre-marital sex and out of wedlock children is not what it used to be. That said, ther’s no question that children who grow up in a stable family environment with two parents have a much better chance at future succes, by any measure.
It’s a minor point, but the “committed relationship” stats are pretty ephemeral. The point is that 70% of any group having children out of wedlock (the stats on one-parent and female headed black families is pretty dismal too) is toxic, and attention must be paid, as they must be paid to crime rates, drug use, graduation rates, and attitudes toward deferred gratification, sacrifice, and government assistance. Amitai Etzioni’s work maintains that basic life skills like meeting deadlines, keeping promises, respecting authority, planning, etc, are better predictors of success than academic proficiency. So I wonder why the black community and policy makers keep defaulting to racism as the primary reason for the inequities and performance disparities you cite.
Just as an explanation arguing for genetic group tendencies is unpalatable (I understand why, but it is also irrelevant—no group net characteristic tells me anything about an individual, so using that information, even if it were proven to be so, would be a bias, just as assuming an Asian-American is superior because her group outdistances whites in many areas. ), so should be an explanation where racism is the default explanation, and for a similar reason. First, I don’t believe racism in some form can ever be eliminated and second, as long as racism is used to explain or rationalize the problem, it relieves us of seeking sources of the problem that can be addressed by policy. Flogging racism creates a permanent handicap for blacks themselves, I would think, because it is an automatic excuse, justification, accusation and punt, all at once. And the perception that the US is pervasively racist, which is, I believe, pushed on the culture and especially African Americans for some less than savory motives, must be as stress, depression, hopelessness, hate, anger, fear and frustration-producing as the real thing.
When there is a complex illness with many possible causes, the prudent course is to treat what you know can be treated. I think promoting racism as the main cause of the challenges facing black Americans makes the situation worse, and accomplishes nothing.
[Aside: my Dad, raised by a single mom, vociferously denied that lacking a father was a handicap for him, and detested the citation of single mothers as a social problem. Of course, he had an extraordinary mother, and resolved to be a dedicated father himself. He obviously saw some value in having one.)
I think we all can agree that equal treatment is the goal. The issue is how to get there. As a management consultant I often work with businesses that have no clearly defined metrics for success. As a result, they jump from tactic to tactic or continue to embrace the same old ways of doing things expecting things will get better. Without a clearly defined set of goals that reflect the desired outcome we cannot develop rational efficient tactics to achieve the desired outcome. We cannot continue to simply argue that the field is not level without offering any constructive new ideas on what it will take to make things better and gain an agreement on what constitutes success.
I think we must first acknowledge that not every person will achieve the same results despite equal work. In fact it is quite probable that the level of exertion on the part of one may be significantly less that the exertion of another earning significantly less. Two managers using the same tactics do not always get the same results because one could lack the ability to execute that game plan as efficiently as the other and there are no two identical environments in which people choose to operate – location, location, location. Another reason one will succeed more (in monetary terms) than another in a competitive environment because each and every one of us places a different value on the work reward tradeoff. More importantly, some see success in terms of money earned and others in non-monetary terms. If we can accept this then we can begin to move on. We cannot simply assume that what we value highly is the same across the entire population.
Reading everyone’s comments has given me some new thoughts on this subject. Deery chastised me about my comment regarding why we would want to lock up black people at $27K a year. After some thought, I recognized that there could be in fact a for profit correctional industry that has been created inadvertently and will do what it needs to do to survive. Maryland has no private facilities except for juvenile offenders. Such an industry is no different than any of the government social service agencies that must continue to demonstrate a “need” for them. In both cases, those charged with affecting the lives of others have no incentive to help others make a constructive change in their lives to get them out of the system. Ironically, it was Deery that reminded me that I made similar claim in 1995 when I was looking for ways for the incarcerated students I was working with to earn enough money to cover the costs of their education. My plan then was to integrate the construction trades program in the prison with the management program to build modular homes to be made available and sold to low income occupants. My reasoning was that we had the assets to make the program work requiring no new public investment and that the private sector had no right to taxpayer funded commercial transactions for social investments that they would not otherwise provide without government subsidy. To me this was a make or buy decision. I was overruled by state legislation that gave a monopoly to State Use Industries; they rejected the plan.
The common theme in both situations is that the average citizen does not have the objective desire to expand either; only those whose economic conditions would be impacted negatively would have a rational reason for promoting expansion. Please keep in mind when I use the term rational I simply mean it in a purely economic context such that people will behave in a manner that that benefits them and eschew that which can hurt them.
Thus, the nation’s strategic objective metric, with respect to crime reduction, should not be just the number of violent and property crimes committed; acknowledging that reported crimes have been going down according to FBI stats, but we must also include as a metric of success the concurrent reduction of arrest and conviction rates. Measuring success in public safety in terms of reported crime stats that may be directly correlated to rates of arrest and convictions will tend to create perverse incentives to justify an entities existence or rate of work; or in the case of the rank and file worker, the rate of promotional opportunities. The establishment of goals or quotas that do not reflect the overarching strategic objectives and focus only on one type of tactic that “seems” to work will cloud our decision making capacity to evaluate other alternatives that may move us closer to our desired future.
Throughout much of this discussion much has been said about a “level playing field”. No one has ever defined what a level playing field is because it is undefinable due to human choices. Urbanregor quoted some stats about differential earnings of whites and black with equivalent education. He also mentioned differential rates of home ownership. In the aggregate, it appears to demonstrate inequity. The problem with examining demographic income distribution or housing choices in aggregate terms is that the distribution can also reflect differential rates of individual choice in terms of employment and housing. For example: a person with an MEd can earn significantly less than an MBA working on Wall street and an MBA working for a small start-up or even a mid-cap firm will earn far less than his/her Wall Street or Fortune 100 counterpart. Therefore, income levels are in large part determined by the type and place of employment opportunities sought. Obviously, personal connections will create some immediate benefit for some coming from more affluent families more than others but such connections do not guarantee success nor does it preclude the less affluent from ever making such connections and becoming successful. The wealthy become wealthy by making efficient choices and not by propping up underperformers because they know them and like them.
With respect to housing, our paradigm of creating publicly funded low income rental housing projects should be examined. Current policy creates powerful disincentives for home ownership. First it subsidizes rentals making ownership more expensive relative to renting because low income earners do not need the tax shield and more of the monthly income is devoted to housing when buying with no subsidy. Second, unlike a mortgage it is indefinite duration. Third, from a societal investment point of view, it requires an on-going commitment by the taxpayer to fund the housing of others while not reaping any benefit to the tax base. Rental housing never allows the occupant to amass any wealth from equity building which could be the only method of saving and investing for those just making ends meet. Low bid public funding of rental housing also creates an incentive for private enterprise to build it as cheap as possible reducing its long term value as an asset. And finally, it does nothing to promote a vested interest in keeping the asset in good order by the user.
My suggestion is that instead of trying to qualify people for mortgages by increasing the minimum debt to income ratios or increasing the percent of total debt relative to income (which is the reason for the housing meltdown) we might consider allowing Section 8 subsidies to increase the actual reportable earnings of the mortgage applicant. Rather than passing the subsidy to the private landlord it is passed to the mortgagee as guaranteed part payment of the debt. This allows the occupant to have an ownership interest in the property in which he/she will reap the benefits of long term capital gains. Instead of the government contracting out the construction and management of the project it will retain an interest in the property in the event of default (like a VA loan). Given that Section 8 requires the recipient to use 25% of its monthly income for the cost of housing the private bank is only on the hook for 25% or less. This gives the low income occupant the ability to begin developing a good credit history. If the occupant needs to move to a larger home the property is sold at the Fair Market Value perhaps to another needy family and the initial principal is returned to the private lender and the equity gained over time is applied to the principle of the new home. The VA is the lending model and HUD Section 8 is the financing.
Again by focusing on measuring the desired results and not the efficiency of tactics that may lead to perverse methods of achieving them, we can develop alternate strategies to achieve the desired result.
We should not simply follow those that cry foul when they are unwilling to negotiate an agreeable set of standards for equity that acknowledges that people make different choices while also not offering any concrete metrics for when success is achieved or offer plans that make all the participants responsible stakeholders.
+1 Great comment Chris.
You aren’t doing so bad yourself.
Jack
I just appreciate the forum and the help others provide me in my thinking.
You’ll be happy to know that I fixed the misspelling of your name. You’re just going to have to simplify that.
Thank you – keep me thinking. It keeps me off the streets and out of trouble – most of the time.
Comment of the Day on your own Comment of the Day. I’ve got to come up with a better way to handle this…it’s never happened before.
Excellent comment, and added more to the thread. Well done….