I Can't Breathe
Steve Chapman of the Chicago Tribune provides a thoughtful analysis of how to talk about race and crime.  He points out that the typical black response to Trayvon, Ferguson and Eric Garner and more focuses on a pattern of treatment at the hands of law enforcement that varies on the basis of the color of our skin.  And the typical white (conservative) response is to ask why blacks do not do more to reduce black-on-black crime.

Chapman’s argument would be improved if it were more informed by New Jim Crow and included the ways race accounts for the differential crime statistics themselves, but his piece is worth reading, as far as it goes.

“The Giuliani view omits some vital facts. The epidemic of unarmed blacks being killed by police comes not when black crime is high but when it is low. Homicides committed by African Americans declined by half between 1991 and 2008.

Since the early 1990s, arrests of black juveniles have plunged by more than half. In New York City, where Eric Garner was killed by police, the rate of homicides by blacks is down by 80 percent. In Chicago, where most murders are committed by African Americans, the number last year was the lowest since 1965 — and this year’s could be lower yet.

What is also easy to forget in the denunciation of black crime is that the vast majority of blacks are not criminals. In any given year, less than 5 percent of African Americans are involved in violent crime as perpetrators or victims. The fact that blacks make up a large share of the violent criminal population gives many whites the impression that violent criminals make up a large share of the black population. They don’t.

Why don’t more blacks living in bad neighborhoods learn to behave like sober middle-class suburbanites? One reason is the shortage of stable families, steady incomes, good schools and safe streets.”

Dana Milbank of the Washington Post helps us see the opportunity here.  The president’s call for body cameras is a good move, but the opportunity is larger, because many conservative voices are now also outraged after the Eric Garner grand jury did not indict.

“There are any number of bigger things Obama could do, including alternatives to grand juries. This year, Wisconsin Republican Gov. Scott Walker — no liberal — signed first-in-the-nation legislation requiring an outside investigation whenever anybody dies in police custody and a public report if charges are not filed. The president could use his pulpit to push for similar laws in the other states. He could at least demand a national count of police killings, which, scandalously, we still don’t have. Or he could take a broader approach to racial matters and revive a rewrite of elements of the Voting Rights Act struck down by the Supreme Court; there is already bipartisan support for such action.”

While Milbank sees opportunities to problem solve and build national unity at the same time…ESPN framed LeBron and others wearing “I can’t breathe” t-shirts as ‘polarizing athletes’ weighing in on a ‘polarizing issue.’ 

 

 

Twitter Challenges 'Just Police Work' Response
#crimingwhilewhite on twitter is generating an astonishing list of crimes committed by white folks that resulted in a police officer escorting them home, buying them groceries, or doing just about anything other than shooting them.

The Line Between Law-abiding and Law-breaking is thin and blurry

Everyone, even the most law-abiding among us, has probably broken the law, likely multiple times.  Here is a simple list of 67 common violations.

1.    driving faster than the posted speed limit

2.    driving faster than 20 MPH in a school zone

3.    seriously speeding on a highway

4.    minor shop lifting (including office supplies from work)

5.    cheating on taxes (for those old enough to understand)

6.    parking illegally

7.    consuming an illegal drug

8.    transporting (knowingly or not) someone in possession of an illegal drug

9.    living in a home where someone is growing pot

10. living in a home where someone is selling pot

11. driving after drinking alcohol

12. driving while drunk

13. driving with a child who is not in an approved car seat

14. consuming a prescription drug recreationally

15. taking a prescription drug from someone else

16. taking your parents’ liquor

17. jaywalking

18. getting into a fist fight

19. threatening to hurt someone

20. sex before your age of consent

21. underage drinking

22. failure to report a crime against a minor

23. trespassing

24. doing a donut on someone’s lawn

25. vandalism

26. smuggling cigarettes and wine in from Mexico w/out paying the duty

27. hiring an illegal maid

28. Using mother nature as your restroom

29. ripping the tags off of pillows and mattresses

30. movie hopping...paying for one but watching more than one

31. jumping the turnstiles on the subway

32. littering

33. illegal downloading

34. keeping a library book

35. seeing a crime and failing to report it

36. not stopping at a stop sign

37. bringing your own snacks into the movies

38. public intoxication

39. sex acts in public spaces

40. some sex acts in your own home with your legal spouse

41. loitering

42. pulling over on side of highway/road

43. doing u-turn in a prohibited zone

44. slander

45. too many occupants in car

46. not wearing seat belts

47. providing false identification…using a fake ID

48. inaccurately filling out a form for the government, or school, or a job app

49. workplace theft of time…personal calls, etc all while being paid for that time

50. fireworks (in some states)

51. backyard fires (in urban areas)

52. TPing someone's property

53. texting/talking on cell while driving (some states)

54. parking too far from curb (parallel parking)

55. improper passing

56. driving with a tail light out

57. driving with expired plates

58. driving without a valid license

59. opening someone else's mail

60. smuggling chocolate into the USA

61. violating Fire Code by exceeding maximum number of occupants in a space

62. making moonshine

63. riding a bicycle on the sidewalk

64. not wearing a seatbelt

65. staying after hours in a public park

66. running a red light

67. not cleaning up a pet's droppings when not dropped on your own property

Of course, we can all identify one or two items on this list that we might challenge as not technically illegal or whatever, but that is not the point.  Step back and take in the list as a whole.  The message is not really controversial:  we are all law breakers. 

That does not mean we are not upstanding citizens (some of us anyway!) who contribute to our communities, love our families, and work hard.  It turns out that the meaning of being a law-abiding citizen is something of a paradox in the real world. 

This matters and it doesn’t.

It doesn't matter, when we are blithely pointing our fingers at other’s law-breaking to demand ever more extreme forms of punishment for minor crimes.

It matters when we hear the most common response to any discussion of racism in our CJS: ‘there are more blacks in prison, so they chose to commit more crimes, and deserve it.’ 

If we start from the premise that we all commit crimes, multiple crimes, but only some of us are stopped and arrested and charged and sentenced and then labeled a felon for the rest of our lives, or even shot on the spot... 

Jon Stewart nails it again...'I cannot breathe'

From Hands Up, Don't Shoot to I Can't Breathe
Eugene Robinson was particularly passionate this week in the Washington Post.

And while the widespread resonance of race hatred within our culture means we cannot simply blame our leaders, it is also true that leadership--public and private sector--plays a role.

Will Miss the Colbert Report
Hope his new gig is as thoughtful and hilarious!

Hysteria Over Routine Bureaucratic Action

Let’s dial it down several notches and start with some facts.

The President’s recent administrative rule changes on immigration are neither an unusual use of presidential authority (Reagan and Bush both made identical changes on the same issue) nor do these actions make effective government action (on immigration or other issues) less likely in the president’s final two years.

So many talking heads get it backwards, arguing we should focus our anger at the president’s decision to address a long-festering problem.  But Gerson is correct to note that the president’s decision to adjust the rules promulgated by an executive branch agency, as every president does all the time, can be seen as sign that the president has ‘given up on politics.’ 

Who could blame him?

The other side has spent six years ensuring that no progress can be made taking the harder road of compromise.  The sound-bites have been played over and over, where Congressional leaders proudly announce that their strategy is to prevent the president from addressing any of the challenges we face as a nation.   Gerson argues the president is turning away from politics because he cannot handle the heat and does not want his own ideas to be challenged.  This is, again, backwards.

This president has consistently shown an enthusiastic willingness to compromise.  We know he has put on the table concessions that most in his own party do not support in order to get things done.  As Mann & Ornstein demonstrated in a bipartisan analysis that leaves those criticizing the president today looking like partisan hacks, there is no doubt where the source of the obstruction has come from.  It is simply not accurate to claim that ‘both sides are doing it.’  

In a context where one side consistently refuses to subject their own ideas to the scrutiny and challenge of doing politics, the executive would be irresponsible not to act.  The fact that the president has shown restraint in waiting six years is yet further evidence of his excessive willingness to do politics, to subject his ideas to challenge. 

But even when the president embraced Republican ideas in order to make politics work for Americans (individual mandate and carbon tax, for instance) the response has been, like the criticism of his administrative action today, to re-write history. Just like responding to the president accepting their own ideas with the charge that these ideas—their own ideas—are socialism, today the partisan obstructionist strategy is to blame the president for their own obstructionism.

The president’s action is actually rather unremarkable.  It is a testament to the power of the extreme right noise machine (and their dominance of the so-called ‘liberal’ media) that a routine bureaucratic action has come to be accepted by most talking heads as a revolutionary act by either a courageous or treacherous president, depending on your partisan position.

Since the track record of the past six years provides clear evidence that anyone would be foolish to expect comprehensive immigration reform to emerge from this Congress, after spending six years trying to partner with those more interested in demonstrating government itself is a bad idea, the president has finally taken action he could have taken years ago. 

He waited because he would prefer collaboration to create a comprehensive fix that can only be done through legislation.  It is not within his executive authority to implement a comprehensive fix, but he can adjust the rules to help hard working families and he did.

With no reasonable expectation that even embracing Republican ideas will lead to compromise, there is no rational way to conclude that the president’s action will make it harder to get things done, or that it increases polarization,  or will further stall stalled action on presidential nominees, or that it hurts the president’s allies. 

Will it further enrage the already irrationally hysterical far right?  Yes.  But being an alien socialist Muslim follower of a radical Christian preacher does that, so there is clearly nothing in the realm of the reality that this president can do to prevent their hysteria.

It was long past time to act.  The action was routine and inadequate only because Congress refuses to act.  The hysterical reaction is the best evidence that politics is broken, because it shows serial obstructionists within the government crying foul over the idea that governments can act effectively to address problems.

It is Expensive to Be Poor
The Atlantic