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Michael Brown and Ferguson

Published by marco on

I haven’t really weighed in on this topic because I’m still digesting it. There are so many interlocking parts and so many reasons for why things are not right that an off-the-cuff article just doesn’t do the topic justice. A lot of what you read gives the impression that the fact that people are rioting in one town in the Midwest is a good excuse for trotting out more unsavory opinions in the guise of chastening those thugs and hoodlums who can’t abide by the rule of law.

If you assumed that with “thugs and hoodlums who can’t abide by the rule of law”, I was referring to the folks on the streets in Ferguson, then you might want to count down from ten before you contribute anything to a discussion on race. If you wondered to yourself whether I meant those in power—represented by cops these days—instead of the knee-jerk target, then you’re in the right frame of mind for thinking about social policy in a U.S. in a way that might lead to solutions rather than a further cementing of existing disparities.

Kunstler’s theory: blacks are getting away with murder

The article Now Eric Garner by James Howard Kunstler is one such unsavory opinion. He’s wildly off base when he writes,

“Worse, the decision only muddied the public’s view of several events in recent years involving black people, police, and standards of behavior so that now a general opinion prevails that all black people are always treated badly for no reason. That was the same week, by the way, that a white Bosnian immigrant named Zemir Begic was bludgeoned to death by three black teenagers wielding hammers who were out beating on stopped cars on a St Louis street — a crime that was barely covered in the news media, and went unprotested outside the immigrant neighborhood where it occurred.”

I’ve followed Kunstler for years and have noticed the warping already in his discussions of Israel and Palestine, but this is almost too unpalatable to keep reading.

Why is that?

This is poorly veiled code for: black people sure seem to be committing a lot of crime. And now they’re whining about getting shot once in a while? Because cops notice that blacks commit crime? What kind of a messed-up country are we? By bringing Zemir Begic into it, Kunstler is comparing apples to oranges and is, honestly, not even trying to understand what is going on outside of his unfortunately warped lens.

Use your brain

I want to emphasize that this is a guy who can contribute in nuanced way to many discussions, but here he just seems tone-deaf. He falls into the same trap that the less-informed do: they come to statistically and experimentally untenable conclusions. For example, dozens of studies will tell you that the various racial groups in the U.S. tend to commit about the same percentage of crimes in the various categories in direct relation to their proportion of the population.

Where the racism comes in, is in the arrest rates. If only blacks are arrested for doing crack, we can conclude that only they are doing crack. Unless we also know from anonymous studies that everyone does crack, but the cops only seem to catch black people doing it. The theory that black people do more drugs is belied by the data. The next theory is that there is a racist component to the arrest rates. Science is really not that hard.

Desperation explains crime

People are not pissed because they are being treated slightly unfairly. They are pissed because they know that the whole system is tipped against them and now on top of having unutterably shitty lives of mostly silently suffering desperation they’re being murdered in increasing numbers and in ways that are sanctioned by the state. They have understandably moved to a game plan that is based on a realization that once they can just execute you with impunity, you don’t have very much more to lose and you just about have to fight back.

And this is not just a black thing. It’s very much a class thing, with homeless and poor of all races being treated poorly across the board. The incarceration numbers—percentages and sentence lengths—speak for themselves: the American justice system is extremely racist from top to bottom. No study bears out the theory that “black people commit more crime.” Poor and desperate people do commit more crimes.

That’s small stuff, though, Rich people do much more harm with their crimes. But we don’t care about those. Instead, we suck the poor dry, like vampire mosquitos, with fines and penalties and late fees and exorbitant interest rates. We have a society that drives them to crime, just to survive, and then we hammer them for it all the more, exclaiming exasperatedly that “these people just won’t learn”.

Oh, I think they’ve learned quite well the lesson that society has taught them. And just like many of us have learned the lesson our experiences in society have taught us: that nothing really bad can happen to us, no matter what, they’ve also learned their lesson: no matter what you do, you’re fucked.

Murder depends on the perp

To get back to Kunstler’s article, the difference between Begic’s murder and the murder of Michael Brown is that suspects were arrested in the former case whereas in the latter the perpetrator was let go without a trial.

The difference is that when the powerless prey on the powerless, arrests are made. When the powerful prey on the powerless, nothing happens.

And that’s why people are protesting.

People have been arrested for Begic’s murder and his family will likely get justice. Eric Garner was choked to death by several police and the country chuckles to itself that it was his own fault for being so fucking fat.

Disgusting.

An egoist’s reasoning against racism

While we’re on the subject of tone-deafness and “not helping”, the article When Whites Just Don’t Get It by Nicholas Kristof (New York Times) ends up exhorting whites to ask themselves “what’s in it for me?”

The article seemed promising at first, despite the byline, which is ordinarily a warning to keep away. I’d gotten a reference from a reliable source and the citations were also encouraging.

For example,

“The net worth of the average black household in the United States is $6,314, compared with $110,500 for the average white household, according to 2011 census data.”

That is truly staggering. There are more equally staggering facts, all of them showing a massive disparity, based pretty much solely on skin color. Blacks are far more likely to go to jail, they get paid less—and the income and wealth disparities have only gotten worse, not better.

For once, Kristof’s heart seems to be in the right place—he writes that the feeling that racism is dead is a “smug white delusion”.

Unfortunately, it seems to be impossible for Kristof to write further about this topic without his standard veil of disingenuousness. For example, in the following citation, he take the “we’re all in this together” attitude, appealing to his mostly white readers with a message not of basic morality but of self-interest. As usual.

“All these constitute not a black problem or a white problem, but an American problem. When so much talent is underemployed and overincarcerated, the entire country suffers.”

Yeah, but blacks suffer just a bit more than whites. It’s like a husband telling him wife after he’s beaten her bloody one more time: “we’re both suffering, honey. Look—my knuckles are all skinned. And…and, I get nightmares.”

And here, while he’s able to correctly point out that mass incarceration is one of the chief weapons employed, he’s incapable of calling it for what it is: a deliberate means of unfairly keeping the black man in line.

“Because of the catastrophic experiment in mass incarceration, black men in their 20s without a high school diploma are more likely to be incarcerated today than employed”

Don’t be stupid

It’s not exactly a tipping point for America today, but the world is looking on with an ever-more-appalled look on its face. Things have however been this bad—and worse—before, so we shouldn’t flatter ourselves into thinking that this time it will be different. Instead, we should examine our knee-jerk reactions to these killings and make sure we have some facts before spouting off 19th-century opinions about the “mind of the negro”.

We should all try to be better, try not to be so swayed by lazy, stupid arguments that end up in cul de sacs rather than in workable solutions. If you think you have the solution to America’s problems, think your idea through to the end and see if it wouldn’t eventually lead to internment camps or curfews or perhaps a quick little “cleansing”. If it does, back away slowly, and let the grown-ups do the talking for a while.