Eroding Our Personhood Word by Word

I’m not offering anything new here. Everyone knows what people mean when refer to “inner city” or “urban” problems. Everyone knows that “thug” is meant as a gentler way of saying negro. And everyone knows that this is part of the process of dehumanization. And this process is key to any sustained effort to enforce second class citizenship.

After all, how could slavery and subsequently Jim Crow be tolerated if ruling caste were forced to admit that those whom they were oppressing are indeed people? Why do you think that the famous sign, so simple yet so profound, to be seen at many actions led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. read simply “I AM A MAN”?

It almost speaks for itself that humanity cannot confront its own inhumanity so we use coded language to help ourselves sleep. The tragedies in Rwanda, Yugoslavia, and Germany might have played out differently if the perpetrators of those horrors hadn’t convinced themselves that their victims were “snakes and cockroaches.” If our youth weren’t dismissed as thugs in the mainstream conversation maybe they wouldn’t be 21 times more likely to be killed by the police. Maybe there would be more of us college than in prison and not the other way around.

I repeat myself, I am not offering anything new. To the contrary consider this the permanent place that the city has had in the minds of bigots.In the leadup to the pogroms of the late 19th and early 20th centuries were preceded, predictably, by an uptick in anti-Semitic rhetoric and sentiment. When Russians referred to cosmopolitan culture everyone knew exactly who they were talking about.

Boringly Predictable

I suppose that it was only a matter of time before reactionary forces ginned up on racism, fear, and ignorance would begin lashing out against BLM demonstrators. It’s strange to think that there is a segment of society so married to their own need to dominate that when a group, historically displace and dispossessed, makes the simple demand not to be targeted for undue state sanctioned violence the only sensible response seems to  be violence. Of course it is also boringly predictable.

Throughout American history whenever Black folks have raised fairly moderate demands it has been met with dogs, shotguns, and vigilantism. While it seems to me that our demands have gotten simpler (upending slavery necessitated the dismantling of an entire economic system, suffrage revolutionized electoral politics, etc. Demanding not to be killed by those ostensibly paid and sworn to protect and serve seems a moderate proposal) the sorts of violence visited on us have gone unchanged. Our churches and meeting places are burned, our leaders are assassinated, gatherings are attacked, and our message is denigrated by the mainstream political class.

Yet there is debate as to whether our communities are victimized by terrorism.

One Step Forward; Two Steps Back

It’s sad that we have to call California’s new regulation that police not tamper with body cameras a victory but that’s just where we are in America. Of course this is a victory and what I say should, in no way, be taken to impugn the hard work of activists who pushed for this. That said, the adulation with which this law has been greeted leaves me feeling somewhat deflated. While it is clearly good that there are now enhanced regulations regarding the storing of body camera footage many of these provisions are not in effect for another three years.

At the same time the head of the police union, one David Bejaroy, condemned the legislation, arguing that “…there is no proven information that this reduces or prevents racial profiling.” That may or may not be true but the officer seems to be willfully missing the point.

Within two days of this new law being signed something much more disappointing took place at a higher level of authority. US Attorney General Loretta Lynch publicly asserted that she does not support, and therefore neither will the Justice Department which she heads, a federal mandate for the collection of details in the incidence of killing of police. In order to assess and address any problem one must, self-evidently, be able to accurately measure the scale of the problem and while Lynch’s cowardice is unfortunate on it’s own her rationale is tragic.

It is her position that it is more important to improve relations between the police and the community. She should say that to the families and communities who lost Rekia Boyd, Tamir Rice, and so many others.

On the Other BLM and Untouchable Whiteness

The federal Bureau of Land Management was created during the Truman presidency as the merger between two previously existing agencies The BLM is charged with sustaining “the health, diversity, and …

Can we not grieve our deceased?

There has been another officer involved killing in my own small city and tensions are appropriately high. Details are murky; they usually are. But the family and community are mourning …

What is the truth?

What is true can be debated. The facts cannot. One can debate what is or was true in any given incident. One can attempt to reduce a situation to less than the sum of it’s parts. Was the victim high? Did they have a criminal record? Did the police act within the rules of engagement?

It is fruitless to debate the truth in a situation like that of John Crawford III when the fact is that a Black man who committed no crime was left dead at the hands of the police.

The truth of being Black in America is categorically different from the truth of being white in America but there are certain facts which are useful in framing a broader truth.

• Black are people are extrajudicially killed at roughly the same rate at which they were lynched during the peak of lynching. Historians best estimates state that during the late 19th and early 20th centuries 2-3 Black people were lynched each week. According to the FBI’s self-admittedly conservative estimates place the rate of extrajudicial killing of Black folks at 2 victims per week
• Young Black males are 21 times more likely to die during a police encounter than young white males. According to federal data which is widely acknowledged as underestimating the problem, from 2010-2012, Black males 15-19 were killed at a rate of 31.17 per million compared with 1.47 per million for their white counterparts
• Research conducted by Bowling Green State University informs us that over a seven year period only 41 police were indicted for on-duty murder or manslaughter charges. A USA Today analysis of the police killings reported to the FBI by local police agencies identifies about 400 incidents per year of police killings. This yields an indictment rate of less than 1.5%, meaning that 98.5% such incidents have a prima facie assumption that police acted appropriately
• According to the same USA Today analysis, Black people comprise nearly a quarter of all reported incidents of extrajudicial killing. Meanwhile, Black Americans comprise 12% of the population

The above bullets are merely a preliminary framing of the state of Black American/police relations. There is, of course, much more that can be said. But this fact cannot be debated; Black folks are disproportionately the victims of state-sanctioned violence in America.