This is my second posting about Ethical Humanism’s engagement in events following the failure of the American justice system to indict the police officers who killed Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Eric Garner in Staten Island, New York.
Many Ethical Society Leaders and Members have taken part in organized protests, particularly in St. Louis, New York and Washington, D.C.
Joe Chuman, a long time Ethical Culture Leader, wrote this piece that provides a useful analysis of the historical and present circumstances of Racism in America.
As always, comments are most welcome.
Randy Best
Racism Endures
The refusal to indict police officer Daniel Pantaleo in the killing (one wants to say murder) of Eric Garner is shocking, egregious, even incomprehensible. Even more so than the grand jury verdict in the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson Missouri, the failure by the Staten Island grand jury in the Garner case defies commonsense. Here we have a video of the killing for all the world to see. The conclusion that no crime was committed thrusts us into an Alice-in-Wonderland reality. How are we to explain this discontinuity?
Since the proceedings of the grand jury are opaque, we can only fall back on conjectures that are contextual. Here are a few:
The legacy of enduring racism. In 2010, New Yorker writer, David Remnick, authored a magisterial biography of Barack Obama, entitled The Bridge. The title suggested that the ascension of the first African-American to the presidency served symbolically as a bridge from the Civil Rights era to a new age of engagement that would bridge the differences among the races. Remnick’s presumptions seem to have been tragically premature. The failure of the grand juries in the Garner and Brown cases, and the ceaseless litany of killings of black men by white police, seem not so much as throwbacks to an earlier era but a continuation of those institutionalized injustices into our own. We would like to believe that American society was turning a corner with regard to race, but lamentably racism endures. Recent events are both the symbols and substance of that.
But in another sense they are merely the tip of the iceberg. The phenomenal incarceration rate of black men, overly zealous prosecution of African-American men, disparate sentences for whites and blacks committing the same crime, the presumptions that police have of guilt based on skin color (think racial profiling), all speak to the racist character of the criminal justice system. The lack of equal justice has pervaded and continues to pervade the system as it does American society. The Garner and Brown grand jury findings are not exceptions. They are apiece with it.
But there are causes more distinctive to our times that, in my view, inform recent events and build upon the legacy of racism.
The militarization of the police. Since 9/11 the tenor of American society, politics and policy has changed. National sensibilities have been heightened in the face of terrorism. The changed direction of our foreign policy has been most evident. We have created a department of Homeland Security that we buttress with massive resources. But the terrorist threat which looks outward also has an inward gaze. A preoccupation with the foreign terrorism has shaded into a generalized fear of the “terrorist” within our midst. It is the response of a frightened public. Most obvious is the suspicion of the Muslim community. But my presumption is that the mandate “to keep us safe” has spread out to inform official attitudes, especially police relations, with regard to people of color.
Terrorism has transformed police in image and practice increasingly into occupying armies and the public it is sworn to serve into a potential threat and enemy. The Pentagon has given its massive arsenal of surplus ordnance and vehicles to local police departments, transforming local communities into potential war zones. Weaponry more appropriate to combat areas and now used to patrol neighborhoods render a militarized demeanor to the police who should be integrated into the communities they work for. Police too often look the part and enact the role of swat teams engaging in overkill, when lesser approaches would be more appropriate. All this generates an “us and them” mentality between the police and the people they are mandated to professionally protect and serve. Minorities are in the front lines of this militarization.
The polarization of class structure. Our politics has become more polarized and shrill. The need for detailed analysis and nuanced understanding is replaced by sound bites and reduction into sloganeering. But hand-in-hand with a nasty political environment we have the increased division of American society by class. All wealth is funneled upward to the wealthiest. And the poor grow poorer. The increase in poverty (one in seven Americans now lives below the poverty level) has been accompanied by the stagnation in upward mobility. In other words, if you are born into poverty, the chances now are that you will never climb out of it. This trend affects racial minorities more than others. While many blacks have moved into the middle class since the great Society programs of the 1960s, many have remained “truly disadvantaged” as the Harvard sociologist William Julius Wilson long ago noted.
Here’s my point: It is emotionally difficult to kill another human being. In order to do so, one has to mentally dehumanize the other, and convince oneself that they are worthy of their fate. In other words, one has to construe his victim as “the other.” It is my contention that the class divisions in American society between those in the middle class (but anxious about falling out of it) and those entrenched in poverty have permitted the latter to be viewed increasingly as “the other,” that is, not one of us. They are increasingly foreign, alien. While in many positive ways the younger generations, under the mantra of tolerance, have broken down racial barriers, the reality of entrenched class divisions have thickened those barriers for others. The poor of the inner cities, especially minorities, given the history of racism, are increasingly viewed as not like us. We become detached from their humanity. Their lives are less valued. When circumstances conspire, as they do in police confrontations, killing them becomes easier.
Unprofessional police. I have been watching the news in the aftermath of the grand jury verdict in the Eric Garner case. I am upset but not surprised by what I hear. Every pundit representing the police, without exception, strains to justify the killing of this unarmed man, choked to death for selling a few cigarettes. The prevailing reality was that Eric Garner was not violent, had his hands raised, and was unarmed and not threatening. Yes, he may have been “resisting arrest” (does one really have to be arrested for selling cigarettes, wouldn’t a ticket and a fine do better?) But I asked myself, since when is selling cigarettes, even illegally, a capital offense? Wasn’t there a better way for the police to handle this?
I have no doubt that policing is a difficult and often dangerous job. But I am also struck (even from my own minor encounters with the police) at how postured, how officious, how pompously authoritarian, how scripted, they are in deploying their professional responsibilities. Police never seem to be able to step out of their authoritarian roles. Display of power, not effective and respectful engagement is the medium of discourse.
Yes, it is hard. But the essence of being a professional is one’s capacity to be flexible, to assess each situation separately, and act accordingly. Yet, the unbending inability of the police to let go of their authoritarian posture at all costs, I contend, is inherently disrespectful and therefore generates resentment and contempt from the public with whom they interact. They are supposed to be public servants after all.
It is inescapable that in the case of Eric Garner the police could have and should have acted differently. That the grand jury did not reach that conclusion raises deep rooted questions about the kind of society we are. It settles nothing.
Dr. Joe Chuman has been the leader of the Ethical Culture Society of Bergen County, NJ since 1974, and since 2008 has served as a part-time leader of the New York Society for Ethical Culture.
Chris Kaman says
This report is worthwhile and insightful reading: http://www.sentencingproject.org/doc/publications/rd_Race_and_Punishment.pdf
It provides a good analysis of race, crime, and public perceptions of crime. Public perceptions of who commits crime is important since a common response by whites to police killings of blacks is that blacks commit more crimes than whites. This report provides insights into this mistaken belief, and provides some recommendations at the end of the report. I highly recommend reading it.
James Coley says
Thanks to Chris for providing the link to the lengthy report entitled Race and Punishment: Racial Perceptions of Crime and Support for Punitive Policies by The Sentencing Project. I wish I had the time to give it the study it deserves.
He indicated in his post that it is a “mistaken belief” that “blacks commit more crimes than whites” but in fact the report explicitly states otherwise.
On page 20, the report states:
“Legacies of overt racism and contemporary practices of willful neglect have divested many black communities of the economic and social resources that act as buffers to criminal offending. In large part because African Americans are more likely to experience concentrated urban poverty, they are more likely to commit certain violent and property crimes – although racial minorities buy and sell drugs at similar rates as whites.”
Apprently, there is a greater incidence of some criminal behavior, not because of race per se but for sociological reasons associated with it in the tragic African-American experience.
The report emphasizes that, although there are these real differences in crime rates, their character and magnitude is exaggerated by many factors.
In any case, it is certainly unwarranted to conclude from any of this that racism, conscious or otherwise, in law enforcement is not also a factor in the higher rate of police homicides of young African-American men.
So the bottom line is that this is a very complicated matter. In my view, the most important thing is to shift the discussion away from who or what is to blame and direct it instead to some remedies.
Jack van Dijk says
Your comment in the last paragraph ” That the grand jury did not reach that conclusion raises deep rooted questions about the kind of society we are”, is kind of nonsense which is the result of blah, blah, blah. There are no deep rooted questions. America is a racist society which will torture people whenever Americans are afraid…and Americans are always afraid of something, specifically of non-white people.
I am happy that I am not part of the american collective.
Del Turner says
Missing the Point
I’ve been reading the ethical humanist posts on the killings of young Black men across the country with great interest, hoping that at last an honest conversation about race in America would evolve. However, what I see and hear from ethical humanists, as well as other well intentioned, intelligent people is talk about racism in pieces, a broken criminal justice system, “wealth inequality,” achievement gaps and other well-turned phrases that are only parts of a much larger whole called structural racism.
That is the core issue underlying every indignity Black people, all Black people, but especially young Black men live with every single day and until structural racism is resolved, everything else is a Band-Aid. The Band-Aid will keep falling off because the conscious and unconscious perpetuity of that invisible cage Black people feel pervasively entrapping them in their own lives, own neighborhoods delivers the message that Black life has no value.
Police kill Black people 14% more than any other race because they are socialized from birth to believe Black people are inferior and have no value. If their parents don’t do, society does.
If structural racism disappeared, police would treat Blacks like any other citizens, Black men who are part of only 13% of the total population would not constitute 57% of any prison population; teachers would teach Black children with the same rigor they teach white children; employers would hire Black workers and pay them the same amount they pay white workers for the same and often more of the same work. The economic foundation of the country would be consistently stable and there would be peace and prosperity for all.
The time for a brutally honest conversation is long overdue; if ethical humanists want to live up to their name, they should take the lead in more than marches and forums that are full of sound and fury but signify nothing of substance.