Friday, March 6, 2015

Agonizingly slow and only in places


     The police dogs in Ferguson never bit a white person.
     Not once, in a damning Justice Department investigation of the St. Louis suburb released Wednesday. Two years of police dogs biting African-Americans, who comprised 67 percent of the town but just 11 percent in the police force, part of a jaw-dropping pattern of discrimination that isn't as unfamiliar as Americans elsewhere might like to pretend it is.
     The report details how police used the legal system as a cash machine, socking residents, almost exclusively black, with multiple expensive tickets, including for "manner of walking," whatever that might be.
     Over the period the feds examined, 93 percent of the arrests made in Ferguson were of black people; 95 percent of the jaywalking arrests were of blacks; 95 percent of the people who spent two days in jail were black.
     The killing last August of an unarmed black teenager, Michael Brown, was the spark that, eventually, illuminated this warped system. People elsewhere wondered — why these days of protest? What's all the fuss about? A single killing?
     Turns out, there was much more than that.
     Not that we should be too smug.
     
Chicago can take some cold comfort at regarding a community whose police practices are even worse than our own. Years of lawsuits have nudged the number of African-Americans in the Chicago Police — about 29 percent — to a figure near the black population of the city — 32 percent. Not that black officers guarantee empathy. Cops aren’t black or white, they’re blue; their loyalty invariably is toward their fellow officers as opposed to the citizens they supposedly protect and defend.
     Then there’s Attorney General Eric Holder’s description of Ferguson: “A highly toxic environment, defined by mistrust and resentment, stoked by years of bad feelings, and spurred by years of illegal and misguided practices.” Well, that kind of rings a bell, doesn’t it? One reason many Chicagoans so easily swallowed the Guardian’s overblown story on Homan Square was it resonated with past practices.
     The real outrage of Ferguson is that it’s still true in much of urban America. If we look in the suburbs around Chicago, we easily see a number of Fergusons or at least potential Fergusons: Blue Island is 30 percent black, with a police force only 5 percent black. Merrillville, Ind. is 44 percent black, with 4 percent on its police force — a 10th of what it should be. And there’s no reason to limit the focus of concern just to blacks: Cicero is 87 percent Hispanic, with a police force only 28 percent Hispanic.
     In their defense, they’d argue that they have procedures, tests, and if blacks or Hispanics don’t apply, don’t pass the tests, there’s nothing they can do. Gang-bangers drive around in cars shooting people, thus cops have to pull lots of cars over and see what they find.
     But failure to hire minority officers is symptomatic of a culture of exclusion. Too many black kids don’t get enough education to be police officers and, based on their experiences with them, wouldn’t want to become one if they could.
     The report is both shocking and nothing new. Incarceration rates for blacks are seven times what they are for whites in the United States. This is in part because of a legal system stacked against them at every phase. Take drug crime. Blacks and whites use drugs at about the same rate. But blacks are arrested more, charged more, convicted more, imprisoned more. The cheaper crack cocaine used in the inner city carries far greater penalties than the more expensive, powdered cocaine that white people use in their suburban homes. Blacks are 13 percent of the American population and 40 percent of the prison population.
     Whites are always eager to blame this on moral failure, to proclaim racism dead. We have a black president, it’s 2015, time for everyone to be responsible for his or own condition. Some people just pick their parents better, that’s all. If blacks are in jail, well, they’re criminals.
     Then shocks like this Justice Department report on Ferguson yank us out of that complacency, showing us how some blacks become criminals: by sitting in their cars. By standing on the street. By merely existing. The criminal justice system grabs them and then won’t let go. They have no high-priced lawyers to skip in and take care of everything.
     This report does, or should, remind us that, in some ways, the 13th Amendment ending slavery, whose 150th anniversary we just marked, was merely a change of tactics. Blacks went from being chattel property to being a powerless, rights-less serf class, a century of Jim Crow bondage.
     That supposedly stopped in the 1960s, when black people snared their supposed right as citizens to vote, plus the opportunity to sit in buses and use restrooms and other basics of human dignity that white people just assumed.
     But it didn’t really end there. We see the right to vote being eroded nationwide. And only a kind of self-admiring white exceptionalism could pretend it ever really ended. We live in a manifestly unfair, racist society. We don’t have to argue; the numbers speak for themselves. Until we recognize it, change will come as it has: agonizingly slow, and only in places.



30 comments:

  1. The only thing here that rings untrue to my ear is the assertion that Black kids don't want to be cops. I think they do, but by the time they are old enough to apply, they have acquired a record that disqualifies them. One element in the hostility that oppressed minorities have for the police is the disappointment that they can't be one of them.

    John

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    1. Interesting take - I've never seen this explored.

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    2. and whose fault is it if the black youth can't be cops later due to crime charges? I suppose it's the white guys fault

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    3. Whitey was at fault during reconstruction, NOT, after the civil rights movement

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    4. that's why many were glad when cosby took a fall, it told it like it was

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    5. enough excuses already!

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    6. sure racism exists, but how much of all this is shooting in the foot of the self?

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  2. To say change is slow is a gross understatement. I do have faith in the younger generations though. Less baggage, more tolerance. That plus father time taking it's toll on the white crackers everywhere whose DNA prohibits them from seeing the folly of their attitudes and actions. It all comes down to education and political power.

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  3. How many black families live in Northbrook? Why do libs never mention that if there is a high level of crime percentages among blacks in proportion to population, perhaps the shoe actually fits. Do columnists ever interview officers who are afraid to say in public they are shot at, pissed on called names, threated, sworn by gangbangers who beat up their women and neglect the kids? who don't want to work at a regular job but want the big drug $ instead? who have no respect for cops , teachers, themselves or their parents? is it always really racism? is it smug to say there is a shared responsibility? why is there no comments from the black community when cops are shot and thus leaving their spouses and kids alone? decent folks... there are manyeducated, middle class afr. amer. families that don't like the hood blacks either... and don't give them a pass as some libs do-having said this, I truly did vote for the Pres. and support those who work hard, am not a racist but a realist- there is reverse racism you know and yes the old south was very wrong-now I can await the snide remarks

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    1. excuse the typos

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    2. where's jesse and al when innocent black kids are shot? where's the massive protests? I don't mean little vigils

      you know I'm right but too worried about being pc

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  4. I don't think this is rooted as much in "Old South" type racism (though that may indeed be at-play as well) as it is the kind of bigotry Jesse Jackson talked about which is rooted in what poverty and violence does exist in many poor African-American areas. Curing that is much more intractable and it involves not viewing African-Americans as just another minority versus one the nation has a historic responsibility towards. It's a ig reason why the "punditry left" refusal to discuss the impact of illegal immigration on the African-American underclass is so maddening. Meanwhile, there are simple things we can do like police lapel cameras and citizen review boards, and also PAYING police better salaries (a lot of these forces pay crap for younger officers)

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    1. Jesse Jackson? the man who will do anything and be anywhere and cry wolf to get attention? he needs to look at funding discrepancies in operation push first.

      he's a reverse racist and opportunist anyhow, he's no Dr. King

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    2. as another article in the ST said this weak, only uneduc. Africans might envy the Hispanics, but let's not forget those in L.A. who were mad at Koreans who had stores, but weren't willing to work 16 hrs a day

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    3. Anonymous 9:56 - the Jesse Jackson statements I'm referring to are well known because it's often cited - wrongly - by people like yourself in supporting racist actions. The most famous one is where he said he might well cross the street if he sees a group of young African-American males on the sidewalk out of fear for his safety.

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  5. funny no one here is saying, stop making babies with gangbangers, some groups seem to hav e more illeg. kids then others, 5 different dads , and dads take care of your kids, study, stay off drugs, yes, hard in some areas but you need to read the columns of that columnist John who writes on sundays, what happened to looking in the mirror? you are all bleeding hearts and that doesn't make one racist to say look at your own habits, sure environment counts but it can be done

    and drug tests should be given if one wants a govt welfare handout

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  6. Sure -- Why not drug tests to qualify for welfare. Why not drug tests for law school applicants? For million dollar mortgages? For financial analysts? For priests, ministers and rabbis? And charge for them, of course. Commensurate with the benefit sought!
    John

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  7. A century ago my Grandmother was working as a social worker in Racine, Wisconsin, and a document I inherited describing the family shelter she ran included a plea for tolerance, not of Blacks, but of Italians, who were then regarded as dangerous foreigners, known for their criminal tendencies, indiscriminate breeding, drunkenness, domestic abuse, etc. Fifty years earlier it had been the Irish who were the spearhead of "the Celtic Peril." These white Europeans were able to assimilate in not too many generations, partly through hard work but also intermarriage and political organization. And, yes, some of them managed to get up in the world through pretty profitable criminal activity. But they were never subjected to Jim Crow in the South and Ghettoization through restrictive real estate practices in northern cities. That's not an excuse for bad behavior by black people, but a realization that the situation will not change through preaching to them about their bad habits but by opening up avenues to advancement that others have enjoyed.

    Tom Evans

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    1. One big difference between then and now is the availability of entry level jobs (many with future advancement potential) for those with the desire to work. Since we have shipped all but the most menial tasks overseas, there isn't much hope for many to find meaningful employment (i.e. - a living wage).

      RC

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    2. Oh, there's entry level jobs that were historically filled by African-Americans to the point of racist cliche (caretaker, nanny, janitor, fast food worker) - guess who took those jobs?

      Today you'll hear stories about a big drop in unemployment and how the recovery is going great. What you won't hear: African-American unemployment rose. http://www.bet.com/news/national/2015/03/06/black-unemployment-rose-in-february.html?utm_term=%23ThePShow&utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=ThePShow

      Just imagine what happens when this recovery reaches the end of its cycle.

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    3. Well the Italians, Irish, Poles and Jews that were picked on during the last turn of the century immigration often married the mom's of their babies or didn't keep making babies with diff. guys. YOu guys all know this is true but keep playing your liberal harp. And believe it or not I don't even vote Republican. I don't care for those who kowtow to banks and wall street/ big business.

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    4. let's face the realties, even in the old south, black men abandoned their families more than other, in proportion to their population- maybe a cultural attribute? different values? something in Africa where it was okay to take more than one wife or partner? don't tell me, that was the white person's fault too- don't worry I hate the KKK and what they did, they forced govt to play affirmative catch up later
      , see the bakke case of the early 70's, reverse racism

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    5. I guess that settles it. Savages. Nothing to be done.

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  8. Could it be the police dogs in Ferg. didn't bite whites is because Ferg. doesn't have many whites there? What are the population stats?

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  9. not quite the same, is it? they are earning their own money and some jobs do run drug tests to get the job

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  10. A Hispanic politician, the name escapes me, once said that they took jobs that blacks wouldn't take. I guess some are too fussy.

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    1. You might be thinking of Mexico's former President Vincente Fox, in a remark so hateful that even Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson took him to task (it was made while Fox was president). That hateful lie, which many white progressives will say when they're pressed, is utterly refuted by what happens when urban factories have been raided and their are lines a mile long for the job. Or 1,000 words: http://www.gettyimages.co.uk/detail/news-photo/job-seekers-wait-in-line-at-kennedy-king-college-to-attend-news-photo/155938503

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    2. yes, that's it, thanks

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  11. Neal must be busy. He hasn't replied here yet nor to Mr. Zorn yesterday.

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  12. Reply? Never argue with a fool, onlookers may not be able to tell the difference.

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