I thought I would post my Opening Words from this past Sunday. I try to remain optimistic – but it is really hard. Perhaps I can only do so from my position of privilege.
Reflections on Ferguson 11/30/2014
It would be irresponsible for me not to comment on Ferguson this afternoon.
Like many, the Grand Jury’s decision not to indict Police Officer Darren Wilson for the shooting Michael Brown, an unarmed young black man, severely disappointed me.
Like Fox News, Ferguson Prosecutor, Robert McCulloch, took a “Fair and Balanced” approach.
Rather than presenting evidence to seek an indictment so that Darren Wilson’s guilt or innocence could be determined in a trial by jury, Robert McCulloch turned the proceeding into a trial of Michael Brown.
The orchestrated Grand Jury proceeding did a perfect job demonizing “the other”. Darren Wilson’s testimony even referred to Michael Brown as a demon.
I believe that this incident deserves a thorough hearing in court.
The shooting of Michael Brown in a suburb of St. Louis generated such outrage, not because it is an isolated violation by one Police Officer, but because it brought forth the long standing systematic injustice faced by black people. This injustice is persistent and ingrained in our society.
I do not live in a post-racial society.
I live in a society that continues to deny its racism.
American Justice is bent toward those with money and power.
I live in a society where the divide between the rich and powerful and the rest of us continues to grow.
Violence is being perpetrated by an armed police force – not by the crowds on the street or the few people trashing stores.
Acts of vandalism are deplorable, but this is not violence.
Violence involves acts against people – not property.
My hope is that Ferguson succeeds in raising peoples’ awareness of the change that is needed to move American Justice toward Equal Rights for all.
I know that it has my attention.
Here is how Peter Tosh expressed it in his song, Equal Rights.
(I then played the song at our meeting. The Lyrics are below. Find it on-line at YouTube, its worth a listen.)
Equal Rights – Peter Tosh (1977)
Everyone is crying out for peace, yes, None is crying out for justice
Everyone is crying out for peace, yes, None is crying out for justice
I don’t want no peace
I need equal rights and justice
I need equal rights and justice
I need equal rights and justice
Got to get it, equal rights and justice
Everybody want to go to heaven
But nobody want to die, Father of the Jesus
Everybody want to go up to heaven
But none of them, none of them want to die
I don’t want no peace
I man need equal rights and justice
I got to get it, equal rights and justice
I really need it, equal rights and justice
Just give me my share, equal rights and justice
What is due to Caesar You better give it all to Caesar, yeah, yeah, yeah
And what belong to I and I, You better, you better give it up to I
‘Cause I don’t want no peace
I need equal rights and justice
I need equal rights and justice
I have got to get it, equal rights and justice
I’m a fighting for it, equal rights and justice
Everyone is heading for the top
But tell me how far is it from the bottom
Nobody knows but everyone fighting for the top
How far is it from the bottom
I don’t want no peace
I need equal rights and justice
I need equal rights and justice
I have got to get it, equal rights and justice
I really need it, equal rights and justice
Everyone is talking about crime
Tell me who are the criminals
I said everyone is talking about crime, crime
Tell me who, who are the criminals – I really don’t see them
I don’t want no peace
I need equal rights and justice
We got to get equal rights and justice
And there will be no crime, equal rights and justice
There will be no criminals, equal rights and justice
Everyone is fighting for, equal rights and justice
Palestinians are fighting for, equal rights and justice
Down in Angola, equal rights and justice
Down in Botswana, equal rights and justice
Down in Zimbabwe, equal rights and justice
Down in Rhodesia, equal rights and justice
James Coley says
Here is an interesting piece by Jonathan Capehart of the Post.
I admire his intellectual integrity. I also agree with what he says about the larger context in Ferguson, despite the way the killing of Brown itself created a false narrative.
“Brown never surrendered with his hands up, and Wilson was justified in shooting Brown.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2015/03/16/lesson-learned-from-the-shooting-of-michael-brown
James Coley says
On the EHST e-mail list, a friend of the Society wrote a comment that engages a genuine dialectic here, and I thank him for contributing to the dialogue in a positive and thoughtful way.
Here are excerpts from his comment.
“There is no question of police excessive force, bias and the fact that some feel they are above the law they profess to serve (I was a victim of that as a kid). There is also, in my opinion, no question that blacks have as much responsibility as do the police for this tension.
“This is another aspect of the dialog that has been missing, from the media, the African American Community, and everyone else. When you have 47% of your prison populations filled by African-Americans when they represent about 14% of the population you clearly have a serious social problem and police bias does not account for all of that shocking statistic… Of course, there are issues of poverty, education etc. that contribute to that statistic and explain it but that doesn’t eradicate any ethical responsibility on blacks to acknowledge it and try to change it.
“There are two causes to this terrible issue and both have to be resolved.”
I actually agree with much of this. My only concern is that in the midst of this we see examples of what I think is a fundamental problem, and it is one that I draw attention to repeatedly. It is at the root of racism, sexism and other moral evils. I am talking about holding an entire group of people collectively responsible for what only some of them do.
Thus, I cringe a bit when I read “blacks have as much responsibility as do the police” and that issues of poverty, education, etc. do not “eradicate any ethical responsibility on blacks.”
I don’t think that all Black people are responsible for these problems. (And I don’t think this friend of the EHST does, either.)
In high-crime Black neighborhoods, most people are peaceful and abide by the law. Indeed, they are often the victims of violence and crimes committed by a minority of young men in these communities. It also seems to be true that the rates of certain types of violence and crime among these young men is higher than it is for White communities.
I can’t see holding the entire community responsible for doing something about this minority who victimizes them. As I keep saying, I think we need to get away from thinking in terms of groups of people, and concentrate instead on the circumstances of individuals. It is not Who is right or wrong, it is What is right or wrong.
Still, I admire the friend of the Society for making this point. As I have argued before on this blog, liberals like me have to get past the knee-jerk tendency to accuse someone of racism if they say that there is more crime and violence among Black people. It just appears to be true. It’s like there being no God. You might not want it to be true, but it appears to be true, nevertheless.
As I wrote elsewhere on this thread, this is not racism, its sociology:
“In impartial sociological terms, could any population over many generations suffer the depredations of enslavement, Jim Crow, lynchings, poverty and substandard or nonexistent education and not have higher rates of violence among its men and boys? Indeed, can one fully appreciate these depredations and not find that sociological speculation plausible?
James Coley says
One thing I note about Randy’s post is that he remarked that “[a]cts of vandalism are deplorable, but this is not violence. Violence involves acts against people – not property.”
The effects of looting and arson in Ferguson have been devastating for people, including small business owners there — many of them African-American — and I can well imagine that some might find Randy’s remark to be deeply offensive and insensitive.
However, I think that what he said is defensible because he is making a comparative evaluative judgement. He is saying that arson, for example, is deplorable, but not as bad as other things that are even more deplorable.
It is a serious mistake to think that, just because someone says that A is not as bad as B, this means that they are saying that A is not a very bad thing.
This is exactly the same type of mistake that some made in their shallow reactions to recent remarks by Richard Dawkins about sexual abuse. Dawkins said that he was abused as a child, but that what happened to him was relatively minor.
Reactionaries attacked Dawkins as though he had said that abuse such as he encountered was not a very bad thing. They found his remarks offensive and insensitive.
It is exactly the same point. Just because someone says A is not as bad as B, that does not mean that they are saying that A is not a very bad thing.
We deserve more thoughtful and careful discourse in Ethical Culture and Humanism, not unthinking emotional reactions.
Jeff says
I took the race IAT test and scored “moderate preference for European Americans”. It’s disconcerting to receive this label, but perhaps not surprising given that I grew up in a majority-white neighborhood (although in a city that is 40% African American) and have attended majority-white schools. I was kind of “self-grading” as I took the test, and I don’t remember miscategorizing any photos or words. So it was probably the time factor that led to this score.
Anyway, frankly, I don’t have much more to say about the actual Michael Brown or Eric Garner killing incidents, from a legal perspective, than has already been said and written, except that in Eric Garner’s case, the video shows what seems to me like a disturbing overreaction by the group of police officers in proportion to the very limited sense in which Garner was “resisting”. It seems more like he was, in frustration, batting away the reaching arms of the officers, an action which could have been restrained without the chokehold and chest compression. And in the Michael Brown case, the glaring problem is why he died even after running away from the car, and, even if he did then “charge” at Wilson and Wilson reacted with his firearm, why so many gunshot wounds to the chest and head?
But the debate about the actual incident in Michael Brown’s case has largely been ignored two other disparities related to race: one, the power disparity between motor vehicles and people walking. R-von mentions that the whole incident started because Wilson, from his SUV, ordered Brown and his friend to leave the street, even though it is a low-traffic residential street and they were near their destination. He then used his vehicle to block their path after they refused.
Secondly, and more importantly, is the disparity in equitable investment in the improvement of neighborhoods in metro areas such as St. Louis, which has a particularly biting history of urban disinvestment, white flight, poorly-planned and insensitive 1960s “urban renewal” (e.g. the infamous Pruitt Igoe housing project), and recent transition to inner-ring suburbs like Ferguson of the urban poor, in part due to gentrification of the downtown core. Gentrification itself isn’t, in my view, the problem. It is a by-product of good ideas; property values rise where more and more people want to live, and more and more people want to live in neighborhoods where they feel they can have a high quality of life. The problem is when gentrification is the “only game in town”, and there isn’t a concurrent value and persistent progress toward increasing affordable housing, living wage, employment opportunities, job training, civic participation opportunities, affordable education, affordable transportation, access to health services, access to parks, and so forth. And when there isn’t a persistent progress toward, overall, coming together as a community, celebrating diversity, and not isolating neighborhoods.
Jim Wyman says
If you don’t want Ferguson to happen here, write Stacy McCoy and offer your support to her new business, called tech academy. (http://devtech.co/)
From the website:
“Technical jobs are open and waiting to be filled, millions of youth are under or unemployed, and our educational system isn’t doing its job to bridge the gap.
tech academy’s solution is to manage a one-year tech-based program designed for youth who can’t afford to go to college.”
The key element of each program will be a long-term paid apprenticeship at local technology companies.
I’ve been helping Stacy and will continue to do so.
There are many ways to help, like investing in devtech at https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/devtech-academy–2.
Stacy and company will need every dollar they can raise,
every referral,
every link,
every media appearance,
every mention of their name and mission in conversation,
every hour of volunteer time, and
every advisor.
She’ll need our help removing obstacles and making devtech a success in building character and investing in future citizens.
Long-term apprenticeships. Imagine the community we can build when apprenticeships catch on, learn as they grow, and become the norm.
Help start here, now, and you will always be able to look back with pride knowing that you applied the resources and effort where it made such a positive difference and changed lives for the better.
Stacy McCoy .
tech academy. (http://devtech.co/)
Jim Wyman
919.360.2285
Jim Wyman says
I’ve been asked to post here what I posted t the Google Groups / [ehst] e-mail list.
Since September I have been assisting Stacy McCoy and her startup, tech academy, (http://devtech.co/)
which has just begun its indigogo campaign. (https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/devtech-academy–2/x/9262732).
Doing this work hasn’t left me enough time to do more than scan the forum. …Jim
James Coley says
I’m shocked and dismayed by the cases of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, just as I was by the Rodney King case years ago. They raise concerns worthy of careful thought.
Open discussion is an ideal to be upheld by Ethical Culture and Humanism, and intellectually rigorous questioning about the controversies of the day should always be in order, particularly in an organization of freethinkers.
While I don’t take issue with anything Randy, Chris or others have said here, I do think more rigor than we usually see is needed in the public discussion and in the media. Although I am generally a fan of the former and heartily detest the latter, I hear oversimplifications on both MSNBC and Fox Nooz.
Some people think that this is really an issue about the excessive use of force by police, and that one should not “play the race card.” It is certainly true that there are unarmed whites who are killed by police, and we can’t look into the souls – even if there were souls – of the police officers who killed Michael Brown or Eric Garner to find out whether they would have acted differently if these men had been white.
I am skeptical, though. This is largely because two arguments can be made that, among other considerations, deserve our attention before we might dismiss a connection to racism. One is a statistical argument and the other is about subconscious responses.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/eugene-robinson-its-a-crime-that-we-dont-know-how-many-people-police-shoot-to-death/2014/12/01/adedcb00-7998-11e4-b821-503cc7efed9e_story.html
Unfortunately, according to this (above) by Eugene Robinson, there are not very good statistics available. (I think one thing that should be done is to require police departments to provide data to the Federal government whenever an officer commits homicide. I also think we need special prosecutors to take the place of the grand jury system in those cases.) But it appears that in the U.S.A police kill about a hundred people a year, about a quarter of those black. No way to know how many of them were unarmed.
So three out of four police homicide victims are white. However, 25% is about double the proportion of African-Americans in the country. The Statistical Argument is that this higher rate is the result of racism. I don’t think it should be out of bounds in open discussion to consider other factors, and it is not racist to wonder whether there are higher rates of violence among black men and boys. In impartial sociological terms, could any population over many generations suffer the depredations of enslavement, Jim Crow, lynchings, poverty and substandard or nonexistent education and not have higher rates of violence among its men and boys? Indeed, can one fully appreciate these depredations and not find that sociological speculation plausible?
Nevertheless, I don’t think such other factors could account for the entirety of the higher rate of police killings of African-American men. But that’s an empirical question worthy of research in publications in sociology and criminology. I’m open to being proven wrong, but my gut is that a lot of the statistical disparity is exactly the result of what, at first glance, you might think: racism. (However, I don’t find it plausible that a police officer would shoot down someone with his hands raised in surrender. I could be wrong about that, but I’ll make you a deal: if you don’t call me naïve, I won’t call you cynical.)
That brings me to the Subconscious Responses argument, which can get into an interesting discussion about what we mean, or ought to mean, by “racism.” This argument is that the kind of racism that (largely) accounts for the disparity is not the sort in, for example, lynchings. (It is not that we have madmen on police forces who would gun down a young man with his hands up.) This is, the argument goes, a much more subtle kind of racism.
In this connection, I’d like to recommend that everyone reading this try an online exercise. Go to this Harvard site, click to take a test, and proceed. Scroll down and click to do the Weapons IAT exercise about reaction times to black and white faces and their pairings with either weapons or harmless objects. I took the test and learned that my response time was moderately faster when a black face was paired with a weapon. Does that reveal subconscious racism in me, although I am not (in my belief system or feelings about people) a racist?
https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/education.html
In this blog thread I’d very much like to see us model intellectually rigorous freethought and freedom of speech in open discussion, and so I am interested in what people think about the Statistical Argument, and the Subconscious Responses argument. I’m also interested in what people think after reading the Robinson article and about the significance, or lack of significance, of the Weapons IAT test, and what your own results turned out to be.
Chris Kaman says
Thanks, James, for your post. I took the IAT and scored a moderate associationg with Blacks and weapons.
As much as I choose to be impartial and fair I am also a product of the South, having grown up in Memphis, Tn.
I have watched much TV, and do believe that crime shows tend to make this link easy. Also, the local news reports
all the black on black crime which adds to this bias. All this goes to say that as Jonathan Haidt pointed out, our intent/reason is
like the man riding the elephant of emotions, and many unconscious processes are at work as well.
I think the good news here is that we can and should talk about these associations, and what they mean for policing,
and broader social policies. I also think it’s important to find ways to increase interactions between and among different
“races,” ethnic groups, etc. Living, and working in segregated communities and groups does not help to mitigate bias.
I do encourage everyone to take that IAT test. While I wonder as David did about any bias or methodological issues in the
test, I also think that it accurately reflected my own bias levels. I’d love to see the demographic profiles of those who had no
bias, and whether blacks (especially in the South) have an equal association of whites with weapons.
James Coley says
Thanks, Chris. I appreciate your points. The one thing I would add, in response to your mentioning that you are a product of the South, is that neither Ferguson nor Staten Island are in the South. There is plenty of racism all over the United States, and sometimes people in other parts of the country like to see their regions as superior — when they don’t see the racism all around them. In some cases, people and communities in the South have been put into a position that requires them to more thoroughly confront racism as compared to other place.
R-von says
The version of the Grand Jury proceedings that I read indicated that the Prosecutor did something unusual: he presented ALL the facts & information that he had available rather than just those that supported his case. That, I believe, is what supposed to be done in a G J proceeding but rarely happens.
Whether or not the police officer should have used deadly force or simply called for ‘backup’ is still the question in my mind. When I went through the State Police Academy (many years ago in CT), we were taught that deadly force is only justifiable when the other party is threatening to use deadly force.
In my opinion, Police Officers of today are more concerned about protecting themselves from any harm than protecting the rights of citizens. What I have seen, over & over, is excessive response in situations where a more rational approach could have been used. In the Ferguson case, Officer Wilson could have allowed the two black youths to continue walking down the middle of the street, after M Brown slammed the police car door against him. It appears, that instead of calling for additional help, he lost his temper.
The NYC incident: clearly a case of excessive police force (brutality?) to subdue a person who was just being stubborn but not threatening. A completely different scenario than the Ferguson episode.
R-von
Ian Davis says
These shootings are part of the same system of power that has been in place since the beginning of the country, when “all men are created equal” really intended to leave women and people of color out of the definition of humankind. There have been flare-ups of justice and several lurches forward in the march to equal justice for all in this country, but mayors and sheriffs who run feudal states still administer justice and ignore equality whenever they please, usually by silent but well-understood intimidation.
When I grew up in the southern public school system, I arrived from another country and did not know what the U.S. was up to. I arrived to public schools that were partially integrated and, by my senior year, were fully integrated – except for all of the white families who had opted out and formed their own segregationist school systems. This trend continued, with gerrymandering tax districts so that public schools would get less funding, so that African-American communities would be gerrymandered, isolated, from the general political trends in a state, so that the inequality that had been the real legacy of the civil war, reconstruction and Jim Crow eras would continue to be part of the American system of justice.
These shootings, effectively by the white power structure that created the country for “all men (see footnote)” are nothing less than hanging tree mob violence, where the mob is not just the policeman involved, but the power that they represent.
As all the tv folks and writers say, there are plenty of good cops who take their time if a crime has been committed and do not look for opportunities to mete out capital punishment for walking in the middle of the street or selling “loosies.” But the police are just the instrument of the system that remains in place since humankind documented its stories. The person(s) in power decide who lives (and how) and who dies (and when).
The challenge is to make the system change to one in which equal justice for all is the power structure – and to keep the structure in good shape once it gets there.
How on earth this is going to happen with corporations running the world is really beyond me. But Michael Brown and Eric Garner and Tamir Rice and Trayvon Martin and Darrien Hunt and John Crawford III and so many others who have not become national news would not be dead in a world in which equality and justice were law.
Chris Kaman says
It has my attention too, and it should now merit our action. How can all concerned citizens make a difference in these two problems: 1) the “unreasonable and unnecessary” use of force among America’s police departments (see the Justice Dept’s report on the Cleveland Police Department, and 2) the disproportional attention to minor crimes in the black neighborhoods in the US. Why does stealing (Michael Brown) or selling cigarettes (Eric Garner) warrant the death penalty?