http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBh3wzXd3vg
Let us stipulate that trooper Brian Encina behaved unprofessionally and atrociously by any standard in his handling of the vehicle stop of Sandra Bland in Prairie View, Texas, on July 10, setting into motion a series of events that led to Bland’s death by apparent suicide in a jail cell three days later. The police work shown by the dashcam video is unforgivable, and could be used in officer trainings on how not to handle a traffic stop.
That does not make him responsible for Bland’s death, however. He was not responsible for an incompetent bail system that had this woman in jail for three days, apparently because it was a weekend, and if she did take her own life (agreed: since her family has no reason to trust authorities at this point, nothing is likely to convince them of that no matter what the evidence, and also agreed, the suicide verdict looks mighty shaky at this point), that is, by law and logic, an intervening cause that exonerate the officer in Bland’s death. Activists will make the obvious Freddie Gray comparisons, but in this case there is no reason to believe that the officer, no matter how wrongful his conduct, either intended or contributed to her death. At worst, Encina is guilty of bad policing and using excessive force. This is not the Freddie Gray case, unless there was a dark conspiracy of frightening proportions.
Once again, however, a black citizen is dead after a confrontation with a white cop. For many pundits, civil rights advocates and black racists as well as irresponsible elected officials, that’s evidence enough that this was a racial incident. It isn’t evidence enough, however. The racial identities of the participants do not mean race was a factor, and absent some other facts that we have not learned about yet, any effort to suggest otherwise is nothing but the Zimmerman con, assuming racism unjustly to advance a political agenda. Let’s see if the Justice Department launches a civil rights investigation this time….again, assuming nothing more suspicious turns up. That would be the smoking gun evidence of this DOJ’s bias. I wouldn’t bet against it happening. Continue reading
Since the Freddie Gray incident, Baltimore’s murder and criminal violence rate has climbed to record-setting levels, with over a hundred shooting deaths in the city this year. The Charm City’s police reported that 28 people were shot, and 9 of them killed, over the Memorial Day weekend alone.
Speaking to CNN anonymously, a Baltimore police officer attributed the spike to police officers in his city no longer doing their job proactively. This wasn’t a slowdown, he said, just low-risk policing, and the criminals are taking full advantage.
This seems extremely likely, and I would expect that the same phenomenon will take hold in other city police forces unless national leadership takes steps to…oh, what am I talking about? That’s not going to happen.
President Obama and Eric Holder’s racialized Justice Department planted the seeds of this with their irresponsible response to the Trayvon Martin and Mike Brown shootings, and those responses were modeled by a biased, unethical and politically ambitious state’s attorney in the Freddie Gray death. The war on police officers by African-American activists, Democrats and the Left was bound to have the result we are now seeing in Baltimore. Either the opportunistic pols, pundits and race-baiters wanted this, or they were too focused on gaining a political edge to foresee it. Now they are reaping what they have sown, and we should not allow them to deny accountability.
Why would any police officer engage in proactive policing when an unexpected turn of events, a resisting suspect or a single mistake in judgment under pressure will trigger protests and prejudging by mobs and the media, resulting in show trials ordered by cowardly prosecutors regardless of the evidence? It is a no-win situation for police, with personally, financially and professionally catastrophic consequences to an individual cop who ends up in the maw of one of these public lynchings. I expect that the next shoe in the process of dropping will be a sharp reduction in police recruits, except of the type that departments use at their peril.
There is no reason for any sane or intelligent individual to subject themselves to working conditions like this, where a disproportionate number of criminals and suspects he or she is going to encounter are African American, and any negative consequences to one of them under ambiguous circumstances will be attributed to racism, bias, homicidal tendencies or hate. We are going to end up with police forces made up entirely of insane or stupid cops.
CNN’s Carol Costello interviewed an African American community activist from Baltimore and asked the question I just did. His answer was a defiant “Because it’s their job!” Wrong. The job was not accepted with the risk of being thrown to the dogs by the Justice Department, state and local officials as an agreed-upon condition of employment. Police must be able to assume, as they once could, that the city, state and national leadership will support them and be reasonable regarding the occasional tragedies that the nature of the job will inevitably entail. Now they clearly cannot.
Had the pendulum swung too far to giving police the benefit of the doubt in every instance? Absolutely. Where the pendulum is swinging now, however, will result in urban chaos. That chaos, ironically, will fall most heavily on African American. Continue reading
Maybe it’s all the same train wreck after all….
Yes, the mysterious death of Freddie Gray from injuries he sustained while in the custody of the Baltimore police has now become a certified Ethics Alarms Ethics Train Wreck. That honor was guaranteed once Baltimore’s mayor started stumbling over her words and meaning and then blaming others; when looters and rioters began burning down stores and a seniors home; when the finger-pointing began and when shameless Republicans started politicizing the riots, notably Texas Congressman Bill Flores (R-TX) who somehow reasoned that the Baltimore riots prove the dangers of gay marriage.
Most of all, a train wreck rating was guaranteed once the African-American activist response to Gray’s murder, inflamed by incompetent handling of the incident by the Baltimore police department, exactly followed the script of the Ferguson Ethics Train Wreck. Gray’s death was pronounced a murder and the police response a racist cover-up before all the facts were known or even knowable. Never mind: “Black Lives Matter” signs were paraded on the streets, and columnists and news reporters began telling the story as if Gray was—not might have been, not probably was, but was—just another in the long line of young black men murdered by the police. After all, we had the recent Walter Scott shooting, captured on video, to justify a presumption of racism and murder.
But a presumption of racism and murder, absent proof, is never justified. It isn’t allowed in court, and it isn’t ethical out of court. Never mind: that’s where we now are with Freddie Gray and Baltimore. Maybe this isn’t a new Ethics Train Wreck. Maybe it’s just the Ferguson Ethics Train Wreck, just rolling on.
As with Mike Brown (and Trayvon Martin’s death) , the underlying narrative of the protests over Freddie Gray’s death appears to be less certain than it originally appeared. The Washington Post reports that a prisoner who was in the police van with Freddie Gray says he could hear Gray “banging against the walls” of the vehicle, suggesting that Gray “was intentionally trying to injure himself.” The prisoner’s statement is contained in an affidavit that’s part of an application by the police for search warrant seeking the seizure of the uniform worn by one of the officers involved in Gray’s arrest. If that account has any credibility at all, it could result in a prosecutor’s legitimate refusal to indict any officers. Continue reading
Being the mayor of any city in the throes of a race riot is a losing proposition; being an African-American mayor when the rioters are all black and the riot was sparked by the mysterious death of a black man in police custody is a hopeless proposition. Last night’s riot in Baltimore actually justified the kind of para-military response that got Ferguson, Missouri condemned by Eric Holder’s Justice Department, but that approach was politically impossible. I don’t know what I would have done in Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake’s hot seat, except hope against hope that President Obama didn’t come out with a statement that Freddie Gray could have been his son. So this is not the time to second-guess the mayor’s actions.
For the record, my assessment is that the volatile combination of acculturated black community contempt for policy authority and long-incubating and neglected racist inclinations in police departments was activated nationwide by seven years of cynical exploitation of racial divisions and distrust by President Obama, Eric Holder and the Democratic Party for electoral gain. Race riots were the predictable consequence, and I say that with confidence because I predicted it in 2012, when Trayvon Martin’s death was elevated to a national issue just in time for the President Obama’s re-election push. Rawlings-Blake may have been part of that effort; I haven’t investigated that. She certainly inherited its results.
My verdict of incompetence in her case focuses less on her failure to prevent or contain the riots than on her inept communications skills. Leaders have to communicate clearly. If they can’t, they have a duty to learn: the skill can be taught. (I’m looking at you, W.) If they can’t communicate, their leadership ability is intrinsically crippled. Leaders who have to constantly “clarify” what they said, or “walk back” comments, or claim that they were “quoted out of context” when they were just quoted lose the public’s trust, and deserve to. Public officials have to be careful what they say, and how they say it, and this is a crucial, indispensable skill in their chosen field.
Rawlings-Blake held a press conference as the riots in her city were unfolding, and said this:
“And I’ve made it very clear that I worked with the police and instructed them to do everything that they could to make sure that the protesters were able to exercise their right to free speech. It’s a very delicate balancing act because while we try to make sure that they were protected from the cars, and the other things that were going on, we also gave those who wish to destroy, space to do that as well. And we work very hard to keep that balance, and to put ourselves in the best position to de-escalate and that’s what you saw.”
—What Attorney General Eric Holder could have and should have answered in his “exit interview” with Politico’s Mike Allen, in answer to the question, “Now, there clearly have been times …when you have felt disrespected on Capitol Hill. How much of that do you think relates to race?”
Holder didn’t answer this way, however.
Holder is black, and consistent with the message that has been trumpeted from the White House, Democrats, the Congressional Black Caucus, and Presidential advisor and Holder consort Al Sharpton for more than six years, any and all problems, criticism, misfortune or failure affecting African Americans can plausibly, reasonably, credibly, and advantageously be attributed to racial bias or outright racism.
Thus Holder’s actual answer to Allen was…
“Yeah, there have been times when I thought that’s at least a piece of it.”
“OK, you can go, but we want everyone to know that the US Government thinks you’re a racist and a murderer.”
The Justice Department’s press release yesterday regarding the final rejection of a civil rights charge against George Zimmerman was despicable and unprofessional, political, as everything Holder’s department has done from the beginning, unethical,and an abuse of its power and influence.
Raising this issue adeptly is reader J. Houghton in his Comment of the Day on the post, Pop Ethics Quiz: Welcoming Rev. Talbert Swan, Late Passenger On The Trayvon Martin-George Zimmerman Ethics Train Wreck. He ends with a question; I’ll return to answer it.
I am curious about the statement by Acting Assistant Attorney General Vanita Gupta that: “Our decision not to pursue federal charges does not condone the shooting that resulted in the death of Trayvon Martin and is based solely on the high legal standard applicable to these cases.” It seems almost like an unnecessary statement of the obvious, like, yes of course; this is a tragedy; mistakes were made; bad judgment happened; and somebody died needlessly. Of course, we all would hope that such tragedies “do not occur in the future” as the JD press release stated… ever! this is a most wonderful thought.
However, what exactly is it that the Justice Department does “not condone” ? Is it possible that General Gupta is suggesting that the Justice Department does not buy into the basic idea of shooting someone in self-defense if believed necessary to protect ones self, or perhaps she questions the basic idea of being legally allowed to carry a concealed handgun by permit for self-defense? Or is she questioning the wisdom of the Neighborhood Watch program which might encourage citizens to… God forbid… watch too closely the goings on in their neighborhoods? What exactly is it that the Justice Department does “not condone” in this particular case?
Not to say that the claim of “self-defense” is always justified… because it most assuredly is not. Nor am I defending in any way Zimmerman for the events that unfolded with very unfortunate results. But I am wondering about the chill this incredibly long and ultimately fruitless federal investigation might put on the fundamental right of self defense to protect ones self or others who might find themselves in the position of facing a real threat. Are citizens going to possibly face federal prosecution in the future for becoming “too involved” in the security of their own neighborhoods, or for protecting themselves or their neighbors if the unlawful aggressor and righteous defender in a specific incident happen to be of the “wrong” ethnicity or race?
Just asking…
While you’re making your list, I’ll explain.
It comes courtesy of Talbert Swan–website here, Facebook page here-— who tweeted it to his many followers, lots of whom then dutifully posted it on Facebook. Swan describes himself as a “public figure.” He is, we learn, an activist, pastor, author, radio talk show host, NAACP president, National Chaplain, Iota Phi Theta Fraternity, Inc. Assistant General Secretary of the Church Of God In Christ. He is also, on the evidence of circulating this meme, a divisive race-baiter who is ignorant of the law, ethics and logic.
Swan sent out this graphic offal with all the typical hashtags: #Trayvon…#MikeBrown…#Ferguson, #Blacklivesmatter and the rest. I would normally just ignore it—I see idiotic memes every day—but this one was posted with approval by a Facebook friend of mine who is objectively brilliant and educated, and justly respected by many, including me. His comment ended with “Case closed!”, and immediately dozens of people “liked” it, many of them undoubtedly then spreading the meme further to make others more ignorant and stupid too. This is affirmatively harmful. Since I know my friend is a good person, the ethics breach is that of responsibility, competence, fairness, and citizenship, the latter because I think promoting racial distrust is being a bad American.
Have you tallied up all the things wrong yet? Here’s my list: Continue reading
All Super Bowl commercials are unethical by definition: they aid, abet, reward and perpetuate the gruesome and deadly culture of pro football. I’ve written about that enough lately, however, so when I woke up with a leg cramp this morning at 4:46 AM, I decided to go online and watch the Super Bowl ads. Here is what I discovered:
1. Most Ethical Ad: Pampers
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HWxiDsGenk
Yet another pro-birth ad during the Super Bowl! This one is especially well done, and for once babies aren’t used as mere adorable props to sell a product unrelated to babies. The spot shows a sonogram of a baby giving her first “hello” with a heartbeat playing in the background, and progresses to show the family’s “firsts” together, from ” first tears of joy” to “first first word.” The ad was especially welcome as a rebuttal to last week’s jaw-droppingly callous and absurd characterization of the abortion issue by MSNBC’s resident radical. Melissa Harris-Perry. She asked a guest,
“Are you at all distressed in the ways that I am about the idea that there is a separate interest between an individual and something that is happening in her body that cannot at that moment exist outside of her body? So, the idea, for example, that I would need a court’s permission for cancer treatment or the court’s permission for a surgery that would remove my hand. Like, if it’s my body, I guess I can’t understand why the state would have to give me permission.”
“Something that is happening” that “cannot exist outside her body”? This is called “desperately stretching for a deceptive euphemism that avoids the central issue.” The Pampers ad focuses on that issue: more than one human life is involved here. Last year, Harris-Perry said,
“When does life begin? I submit the answer depends an awful lot on the feeling of the parents. A powerful feeling — but not science.”
That’s right: it’s a life if the parents think it is, otherwise it’s just like a tumor or a hand. I suspect that future generations will look back on such bizarre and intellectually dishonest arguments by the pro-abortion groups the way we regard the claims of slavery defenders who claimed that black’s weren’t really human. They will wonder how they managed to prevail in public opinion and policy so long using such obvious and vile nonsense.
One way they managed to prevail is that journalists went out of their way to avoid publicizing the aspect of the controversy that make abortion advocates squirm. For example, I reviewed six online ratings of the Super Bowl ads, and not one of them mentioned the Pampers spot, though commentary, ratings and videos of almost all the others were covered. Fascinating. Continue reading
Poor Cassandra. I know how she felt.
The Ferguson Ethics Train Wreck, which encompasses the shooting of two police officers in New York City, is just the second section of the Trayvon Martin-George Zimmerman Ethics Train Wreck. The coordinated effort to represent the American justice system as hostile to blacks, and white society as determined to harm them, was launched in Florida in early 2012, nearly three years ago. It might have failed then, as it deserved to since there was no genuine racial element in the actual Martin-Zimmerman episode, had not the President of the United States used his bully pulpit, credibility with black Americans and the power and influence of his office to declare the local incident as emblematic of societal hostility to African-Americans, and Obama personally. This, as I wrote earlier this week, lit the fuse that exploded into racial violence against police this past week.
I saw it then. I have seldom seen anything more clearly. So I wrote:
What does {Obama] think he’s doing? Teens, children and adults are murdered every day, many of them right where Obama lives, in Washington, D.C. Aren’t all of the violent deaths “tragedies”? Why is this one, and only this one, worthy of specific presidential attention? Is it because black leaders called for the President to overstep his proper role? Who cares what activists call on the President to do—certainly he shouldn’t. Does this now justify their calls for retribution and violence, or validate high school students who are staging walk-outs to protest law enforcement officials investigating a case before they make any arrest? (Are high school students now empowered to dictate law enforcement policy? Suspend every single one of them.)
What earthly difference does it make what Trayvon looked like, who his death makes the President think about, or whether he looked like the son Obama never had? So what? What if he looked like my son? Not good enough? When a white, Hispanic or Asian kid in a hoodie is shot by some gun-wielding hysteric, can those parents also count on a statement of concern by Obama? What if they are just run down by a drunk driver, or killed by being left in an over-heated car? Not tragic enough? Doesn’t strike the same chord of of “seriousness”? Or will these tragic deaths not be viewed as sufficiently important to the President’s “base” in an election year? Do you think these questions are unfair? Who laid the groundwork for them?
Misusing his office and prestige in such matters simultaneously diminishes the presidency and warps its function. The position has always included the role of Mourner-in-Chief, at times of genuine national tragedies, such as the Twin Tower bombings, the Challenger disaster, and Pearl Harbor. Cheapening this solemn function by intervening in local crimes and contentious race-charged controversies accomplishes nothing positive: it is divisive, intrusive, and dangerous.
Got that? Dangerous. I chose that word deliberately. March 12, 2012.
Reading the comments again now is fascinating: readers conservative and liberal denounced my criticism as unfair, after the usual “Bush did it too” spin from the reflex Obama defenders.
Arthur in Maine wrote: Continue reading
Ethics Alarms 
Yes, it IS the same thing as “out of the circle”: you know, Rude.
I allowed, for the most part, the debate following the post from last week, “Ten Questions For Supporters Of “The Movement For Black Lives” And Anyone Else With The Guts To Consider Them.” to continue largely unimpeded by interjections by me. I did this in part because of lack of time and energy–I am still wiped out by a bout with bronchitis—but eventually because I wanted to see where the discussion went without me. I saw. I read. I was depressed.
Here is how I would answer the ten questions. I will for the most part use Charlie Green’s responses as a foil, because he can take it.
To briefly review for those who did not see the initial post, the questions were sparked by an incident following the a three day conference held at Cleveland State University for the Movement for Black Lives.
On the final day, as supporters of Movement for Black Lives were leaving CSU, they saw Greater Cleveland RTA officers with a black teenage boy in handcuffs at a bus shelter. The rest is from Cleveland.com, linked in the article:
The conference participants immediately assumed that the police – not the boy – had done something wrong and began rallying against the police, demanding to know why he was in handcuffs and that he be released. Nobody could have known what was going on. But that didn’t’ seem to matter. The crowd fed on itself.
The RTA later explained that its officers had removed the boy – who they suspect was intoxicated — without incident from a bus and sat him at shelter at Euclid Avenue and East 24th Street so they could get information from him and call his parents. The police officers said in a report that they found the teen on the bus passed out and drooling. He was cuffed as a matter of procedure. As the crowd swelled, the police placed the boy in a police car for his safety, the RTA said in a statement. Then, protesters — many of whom were filming the action on their cell phones – surrounded the RTA police car and prevented the police from moving the teen. (Normally, RTA officers take juveniles to police headquarters, where they are released to an adult.)
An RTA officer then did something stupid. He shot pepper spray at people blocking the patrol car — a move that incited the crowd and played perfectly into the conference narrative about police. Several people were hit and were seen washing out their eyes with water, according to video of the incident posted online….
When an ambulance arrived to check on the teen boy, the crowd moved to allow him to be examined. As police walked him to the ambulance, the crowd chanted “Take them off, take them off” in reference to the handcuffs. The teen was released to his mother, who arrived on scene, and the incident ended….
Brandon Blackwell, a crime reporter for the Northeast Ohio Media Group who frequently covers police and demonstrations, saw the pepper spray video and rushed to the scene. When he arrived, the police were gone but the crowds remained. Blackwell then did what he always does. He started recording with his cell phone and asking questions. On Sunday, he used Twitter’s Periscope app to broadcast the scene live. But the crowd turned on Blackwell as he filmed a large group gathered in a circle on a sidewalk outside of a CSU building. A man announced the circle was only for people of “African descent.”
Blackwell, who is white, was dressed in his daily uniform of jeans, a black T-shirt and Converse shoes. He stepped outside the circle and continued to record. Then, people began blocking his camera with shirts, theirs hands, signs and other objects, including an orange traffic cone….During one of the tense moments in the exchange, Blackwell demanded that those blocking his view not touch his camera.
“I got 800 black people behind me, what the fuck you going to do,” a man responded, getting in Blackwell’s face while continuing to block his camera.
Blackwell asked for someone to get the guy away from him, but more people came at Blackwell instead.
1. How was this rally ethically distinguishable from a white supremacy or a KKK rally?
To begin with, it was a spontaneous rally arising out of an organized gathering. The apparent purpose of the demonstration, a protest against alleged police mistreatment of black citizens, is ethically valid, unlike protesting the “mongrelization of the white race” or equal rights for African Americans. However the manner of the protest and its demonstrated values—animus to another race and presumed bad character and lack of trustworthiness of “the other,” in this case, those not of “African descent,” is similarly exclusive, unjust, divisive, unfair, irresponsible and prejudiced—racist.
The answer, therefore, is “Not enough.”
Charles answered, “The same way an anti-Jewish Nazi rally is ethically distinguishable from a Jewish anti-Nazi rally. Does this really require explanation given history?” It’s a flip answer, but it is also dead wrong, and more than a little bit of a deflection. The crowd was protesting abusive police practices, supposedly, not white abuse practices, and not whites. Why would an anti-Klan rally or an anti-Nazi rally demand a racial or ethnic qualification to participate? Presumably anyone who objected to these racist movements would be welcome to a protest, and if they weren’t, then there is a rebuttable presumption that was demonstrating against something more than just conduct.
2. If Blackwell refused to “go to the back of the bus” as commanded, why would he be any less in the right than Rosa Parks?
Charles’ deflection got more desperate here. He wrote: “That is an absurd analogy. Blackwell was not a minority. Parks was not a reporter. You didn’t state whether the press was allowed, or disallowed. I honestly don’t know enough to answer, but if you do, you should have mentioned it. Not enough info, and an inflammatory metaphor on your part.” I said that the rally was on public property, and that is enough. The press cannot be excluded from a public event, which this was, on public property.
Let’s assume, for Charles’ comfort, that this spontaneous rally of race-baiters who automatically assumed that a drunk and drooling kid being taken off a bus for his own good was going to be executed a la Walter Scott took place on the bus itself—which is no more or less public than the street or a public university. Blackwell was being relegated to second-class citizen status—“out of the circle” is no different from “the back of the bus,” and arguably it is worse—due to his skin color, and for no other reason. That’s racism. That’s oppression. That’s unethical; that’s wrong. That he may not be a “minority” according to the demographic of the nation—gee, can he feel discriminated against in 2050, when whites will be a minority, Charles?—is absolutely irrelevant, unless you believe, as I am sure Charles does not, that prejudice and discrimination on the basis of skin color is only wrong if a majority member does it. Moreover, Blackwell was not in the majority there, as the nice gentleman who threatened him with mob violence was kind enough to point out.
The correct answer: Blackwell had every bit as much right to hold his ground in a public place against a racist command that denigrated him as a human being and as a citizen as Rosa Parks did. If it’s an inflammatory comparison, that is only because those rationalizing the conduct of the demonstrators recoil at the ugly truth.
3. If this is the developing tenor of the BlackLivesMatter movement, why shouldn’t the movement be regarded as a racist one and treated accordingly?
Is it the tenor of the Black Lives Matter movement, as well as “The Movement For Black Lives”? That certainly seems to be what all the signs point to, though I am willing to wait a bit longer. In this case, the group instantly began interfering with legitimate police work, without knowing any facts. That is certainly bigotry, if not racism. Bigotry arises from an irrational, automatic assumption that a group’s members are not trustworthy because they are assumed to possess unattractive and negative characterizations and behavior traits.
Answer: If the various movements continue to act in a bigoted, prejudicial or racist manner, and they have, then they should be regarded and treated as they are.
Charles answered, in a line he may long regret, “Rudeness still does not constitute racism under the law, at least as I understand it. A false conclusion.” Ordering a black man out of a restaurant because of his skin color is rude—it is also dehumanizing, humiliating, offensive, cruel, divisive, and racist. So is telling a reporter that he must “leave the circle” because of where his ancestors came from.
4. How can a university justify allowing a racially segregated event like this to occur on campus?
Trick question. The university didn’t, because the event itself wasn’t segregated. Reports indicated that the conference was racially diverse. However, no public institution could ever ethically use its authority to allow a racially segregated group to hold an event. White students must be allowed to take Black Studies courses.
Charles wrote: “This is the question that colors all the others. Is the university allowed to distinguish between in-group meetings, or not? If it permits such meetings, I see nothing unique about race that would distinguish it. If you’re allowed to have Jewish-only or gay-only groups, then how can you argue you shouldn’t have race-only groups?”
My position is this: if racial minorities do not want to be excluded on the basis of race, then they cannot argue that racial exclusion is justified. The Golden Rule applies. Any other stance is hypocrisy, and permanently undermines progress in eliminating racial bias as long as it persists. This is why affirmative action is both ethically wrong and counter-productive. It is why there should not be televised awards shows for black athletes and black entertainers, and it is why the race-based appointment policies of the Obama Administration have undermined racial trust. You cannot end discrimination by discriminating, and you cannot simultaneously condemn racism while practicing it.
5. Why isn’t condemning such demonstrations a liberal and progressive obligation, and supporting such a demonstration a reactionary one, hostile to civil rights?
Answer: It is an obligation. Because civil rights advocates are unwilling to give up the racial spoils system that sustains them and their organizations, they refuse to meet it. Obviously supporting a race-segregated demonstration is hostile to civil rights.
6. Is there an African-American leader, elected official, commentator or reporter with the courage and integrity to state that this conduct is unethical, illiberal and damaging to the social fabric of the country?
and
7. Are there any white ones with that courage and integrity?
Charles jumped the shark here, answering: “If it’s not unethical or illegal, then the race of someone refusing to agree with you is irrelevant.” This both unethically re-frames the question as being about me, and eliminates a key element of the question, that the conduct is unethical. The conduct involved discrimination based on skin color and ancestry, and that is per se unethical, racist and wrong, no matter who engages in it. That is not my opinion; that is truth. The reason that I selected these individuals for the query is that their societal roles makes truth-telling part of their professional and ethical obligations. As for whites, the issue is fear of being called racist by a panel on CNN or MSNBC.
Answer: If there are, they have been mighty quiet about it.
8. If a rally at the University of Massachusetts demanded that all non-whites leave, this would be a major news story and pundits would be warning that a new wave of anti-black racism was on the rise on college campuses. Why didn’t this incident spark the same kind of publicity and commentary?
Charles denied that a white mob at UMass demanding that a black reporter step to the back of the circle would get negative publicity, a denial that defies explanation, logic and history.
My answer: It didn’t attract the same kind of publicity and commentary because there is a pernicious double standard among the commentariat and in the culture that excuses and rationalizes anti-white racism, just as Charles does.
Here I will address briefly the cultural comments Charles made in a subsequent comment…briefly, because I believe long-time commenter here Glenn Logan knocked them over the wall. A lot of these discussions end up in dead-end alleys where an advocate for a manifestly bigoted and racially biased-position held by the African American community argues that whites don’t understand why blacks feel the way they do. This was the issue that got me censored on Ampersand’s progressive blog, and ended his helpful, if predictable, ideological contributions here. His f0llowers insisted that it wasn’t unreasonable for blacks to feel that George Zimmerman should have been convicted of murder—absent any convincing evidence other than the color of the victim, Trayvon Martin—because of history, and accumulated grievances. Similarly, this was the argument for why the shooting of Michael Brown should have led to charges against Darren Wilson–because everybody knows “this” happens all the time, ergo it is reasonable to assume that it happened to Brown, regardless of the facts. This was essentially the damaging rationalization offered by President Obama in the wake of the Ferguson riots.
This reasoning is just a rationalization for bias, emotion over reason, bigotry, injustice and prejudice. I can understand how people become racists or sexists or anti-Semites, and why blacks assume that every black suspect killed by a police officer was an unarmed innocent who had no part in his own demise, can’t you? I understand why so many blacks distrust people because of the color of their skin; what I can’t understand is why they can’t figure out that if they act exactly like the whites who made them distrust whites, whites will continue to distrust them. This is all bias, and people telling me that a destructive bias should be accepted because there’s a reason for it is not a persuasive or a responsible argument. Biases always come from something; there are always reasons people are biased. So what? It’s still bias, and anti-white biases are no more acceptable and no less destructive than other biases.
9. How is the sentiment, message and conduct illustrated by demonstrations such as these helpful, productive, or anything but destructive?
Answer: It’s terribly destructive, and since it is, it should be called such by the most respected and trusted voices in the culture, and not minimized with euphemistic terms like “rudeness.”
10. A popular and much quoted tweet, attributed to various conservative wags, is this. It is dismissed by Democrats and progressives as being an anti-Obama shot and no more. Why isn’t its underlying message undeniably true?
Charles said: “This is inflammatory, ridiculous, and goes to the heart of the matter. You know better and it is beneath you. It is people like the echo chamber you lead on this particular issue who insist that racism is the fault of the victims, that Obama has been the cause of greater racism, and that blacks should shut up, ignore history, behave themselves and all of us agree to pretend that racism is something that happened long ago, and if everyone just acted white it would all go away.”
I have never insisted or argued that racism is the fault of the victims. And Charles knows this is no echo chamber. On this topic, it is the mainstream media that is the echo chamber.
But the “underlying message” is 100% true. Railing against those with the integrity to call out the divisive—not always intentionally divisive, but incompetently, irresponsibly divisive—policies, manipulations and rhetoric of the Obama Democrats doesn’t obscure what surveys show, what we see and hear, and the sudden spike of murder statistics across the country as a direct result of casting law enforcement as racial conspiracy.
It all was seeded, of course, by the cynical strategy, developed even before Obama was elected, to characterize the same kind of criticism all recent Presidents have been subjected to as racially-motivated, even as this ill-prepared leader has lurched from one disaster to another, domestically and abroad. This was excellent for the goal of making sure that African Americans, whose fortunes have suffered more under this President than any other group, voted for skin-color over self interest in 2012. It has also been a social and cultural calamity. Still, the strategy continues. In the Washington Post last week, for example, African American columnist Colbert King relayed this:
That’s right, opposition to the insane Iran deal is all about racism. Netanyahu isn’t worried that a nuclear powered state that continues to declare that it will wipe Israel off the face of the earth might just do it; naw, he just doesn’t like blacks who are presidents. And since Republicans gave him a chance to plead for his nation’s existence, this is just more proof that they are racists too.
Hey, but I understand why they feel that way, so it’s okay.