David Simon on Moyers

The Wire's creator David Simon gives a GREAT interview on The Journal.

Is the US post-racial? Think again.

Following the historic election of Barak Obama in a country built on slavery, many in the media, Right and Left have argued that racism has ended and the 'divisive' concept of race has been rendered irrelevant. This article in the New Republic takes this argument to absurd lengths, suggesting that since neo-fascists and white supremacists such as David Duke do not hate Obama, we have somehow entered a new age of tolerance. The author suggests that

white supremacists feel compelled to explain away the confounding notion of an immensely gifted and appealing black man. Yet it also reflects the fact that, unlike Jesse Jackson, Obama simply lacks certain cultural signifiers--not to mention an urban-centric policy agenda--that would viscerally threaten racist whites obsessed with maintaining "white rights," ending affirmative action, and cutting off nearly all non-European immigration.

Frankly, in a country where millions of Americans stand to lose their homes, child hunger is skyrocketing, and jobs are being slashed in the tens of thousands, this country needs more 'urban centric' policies. And pissing off white supremacists is a great thing in my book.

But that's neither here nor there. On the question of racism, a recent incident of police brutality brings to the fore the weaknesses of Obama and his campaign to confront racist attacks from the McCain camp and Hillary Clinton and also to take up issues pertaining to the virulent racism of the criminal justice system (Sean Bell, the Jena Six, Troy Davis).

The father of Green Bay Packers star receiver Donald Driver was brutally beaten by Houston cops on Sunday. Police allegedly picked him up on a warrant for traffic violations and then took him behind a gas station and beat him mercilessly:

As they beat him and forced him to swallow something, the officers told Marvin Driver Jr. he was "going to see Jesus," according to relatives and community activist Quanell Evans, who identified himself as Quanell X.

"Mr. Marvin Driver Jr. is now at Hermann Hospital in ICU where he can't even speak," relatives said in a statement. "Doctors say there is some bleeding on his brain from blunt force trauma."

The two accused officers are still on the street, pending investigation. However, according to a community activist, "One of the officers named in the arrest report is Hispanic and has a history of harassing African-Americans."

This event is a sobering wake up call to people who believe that Obama's election could instantly bring and end to the systemic racism embedded in the US from housing and hiring to the criminal justice system.

In another sense, however, this event presents an opportunity to expose this. As Dave Zirin has argued time and time again, professional sports presents a huge platform for athletes to take a stand on against oppression and political injustice, like Tommie Smith and John Carlos in the 1968 Olympics, Billie Jean King's victory in the "Battle of the Sexes". Who knows how the Driver family will respond to this tragedy, especially given the pressures on athletes from their coaches, team mates, and the talking heads in the sports writing world (See Brandon Marshall and Josh Howard?) Despite these pressures, athletes are also affected by the sense of hope and joy that Obama's election brought about nor can they ignore the anger and mass outpouring of activism against the draconian Proposition 8. If Driver's brother's response is any indication of the sentiment shared by the family, we could be in for a battle: "if we can't trust these people, who can we trust? ... I think that my father was targeted for being black."

How Bill Clinton helped to (nearly) murder Troy Davis

In understanding why, in light of all the evidence for a retrial, Troy Davis has nearly been murdered by the state of Georgia three times, it is essential to look at Bill Clinton's Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996. Marlene Martin does just that.

Maryland Corrections Officers Allow Lynching of Inmate

On Sunday, 19-year-old Ronnie White was strangled to death in his solitary cell in a Maryland County Prison. The County Chief Executive declared that the death was a case of vigilante justice. The only people with access to his cell were corrections officers who must have either killed White themselves or allowed someone in to murder him. Despite the Executives report, no officer has been suspended or charged though the FBI has become involved.

White was taken into custody last week (and put into solitary confinement!) in connection with a hit and run that killed a police officer. However, White had not been charged nor even been taken to court. I guess things have changed since the Jim Crow era: instead of allowing mobs to take inmates out of their cells to murder them, now the cops just leave the door unlocked. This is another disgusting example of the brutal, racist nature of the criminal justice system where corrections officers and cops are above the law.

*Update: Phil Gaspers on "The toll of the Racist Injustice System" which includes a discussion of how Blacks are much more likely to be held before being charged than whites, a key component of Ronnie White's murder.

Another disgusting case of Hate Crimes in the US

I don't know how many of you have seen this , case of the kidnapping and torture of a 20 year-old Black women in West Virginia by six white people, but it is stomach turning. Apparently the prosecutor didn't include a hate crime charge in his case (only sexual assault and kidnapping which carry heavier penalties) so earlier today hundreds of anti-racist activists and supporters rallied at the capitol to support Megan, the victim, and demand that the hate crime charged be added. Despite the fact that this was obviously a hate crime, the NAACP and the prosecutor say it would be 'difficult' to prove this charge because she had been in a relationship with one of her white torturers for several months. Are you shitting me?

From the case of the Scotsboro Boys in the 1930s until today, the NAACP has usually sided with a legalist approach while shunning activism and rallies (in the Scotsboro case the massive rallies organized by the Communist Party ultimately turned up the pressure on the government and the courts to either pardon or parole all nine and which lead to a huge upsurge in Black and white collaborative activism). Interestingly enough, the NAACP refused to defend Black CP members from the McCarthyist witch-hunts in the 50s (as in the case of NAACP founder W.E.B. Dubois). Despite the success of their legal strategy in the case of Brown v Board, which, remains to this day unenforced, the national has shunned activism historically despite the fact that some of it's locals have spear headed such campaigns as the Montgomery Bus Boycott (Rosa Parks was the local secretary). But with this case the strategy seems absurd. With the momentum built up through the victory in the Kenneth Foster Jr case and the mobilizations in support of the Jena Six, how can the NAACP say that activism and rallies will damage their chances of victory? This cuts to the core of how a legalistic and lobbying strategy by themselves are a dead end for winning civil rights. Without the attention brought by the struggle to save Kenneth Foster, he would have been another statistic in Texas' death machine. Covering ones eyes to the rise in hate crimes (nooses in the South AND the North, as well as shit like this case of torture) won't make them stop.

By the way, Al Sharpton was NOT present at this rally.

Development Arrested

So according to the US Criminal Justice System, "defraud[ing] the oil-for-food program by making illegal payments to the Hussein regime, ...trad[ing] the humanitarian needs of the Iraqi people for the satisfaction of his own greed and the greed of the former government of Iraq” = ('conspiracy to commit wire fraud' to Saddam Huessein to get lucrative oil contracts in legalese) = 18-24 months in prison.

Growing and possessing marijuana = 75 years for the former, 75 more for the latter (which upon appeal was reduced to a paltry 90 years).

The reason for the light sentence: the guy is an 'octogenarian.' Well, according to my math, James Geddes, the victim of the latter 'mandatory minimum' sentence will be well past 100 when he's done with his time.

Ratio Of Blacks In Jail To Blacks In College Is 3 To 1

The Wisconsin State Journal published an AP article on this recent study yesterday:

More than three times as many black people live in prison cells as in college dorms, the government said in a report to be released today.

The ratio is only slightly better for Hispanics, at 2.7 inmates for
every Latino in college housing. Among non-Hispanic whites, more than
twice as many live in college housing as in prison or jail.

The numbers, driven by men, do not include college students who live
off campus. Previously released census data show that black and
Hispanic college students - commuters and those in dorms - far
outnumber black and Hispanic prison inmates.

Nevertheless, civil rights advocates said it is startling that blacks
and Hispanics are more likely to live in prison cells than in college
dorms.

"It's one of the great social and economic tragedies of our time," said
Marc Morial, president and CEO of the Urban League. "It points to the
signature failure in our education system and how we've been raising
our children."

The Census Bureau released 2006 data Thursday on the social, racial and
economic characteristics of people living in adult correctional
facilities, college housing and nursing homes. It is the first in-depth
look at people living in "group quarters" since the 1980 census. It
shows, for example, that nursing homes had much older residents in 2006
than in 1980.

The new data have limitations. In addition to not including commuter
students, the data do not provide racial breakdowns by gender or age,
though they do show that males make up 90 percent of prison inmates.

Also, most prison inmates are 25 or older while 96 percent of people in
college housing are age 18 to 24.

The data show that big increases in black and Hispanic inmates occurred
since 1980. In 1980, the number of blacks living in college dorms was
roughly equal to the number in prison. Among Hispanics, those in
college dorms outnumbered those in prison in 1980.

There are many reasons black students do not reach college at the same
rate as whites, said Amy Stuart Wells, a professor of sociology and
education at Columbia University's Teachers College.

Black students are more likely to attend segregated schools with high
concentrations of poverty, less qualified teachers, lower expectations
and a less demanding curriculum, she said.

"And they are perceived by society as terrible schools, so it is hard
to get accepted into college," Wells said. "Even if you are a
high-achieving kid who beats the odds, you are less likely to have
access to the kinds of courses that colleges are looking for."

Students who don't graduate high school are much more likely to go to
prison, said Gary Orfield, co-director of the Civil Rights Project at
UCLA. Nearly 40 percent of inmates lack a high school diploma or the
equivalent, according to the census data.

"The criminal economy is one of the only alternatives in some of these
places," Orfield said. "You basically have the criminalization of a
whole community, particularly in some inner cities."

Blacks made up 41 percent of the nation's 2 million prison and jail
inmates in 2006. Non-Hispanic whites made up 37 percent and Hispanics
made up 19 percent.

Hate Crime: What about the Enablers?

The day after 20,000 people descended on Jena, Louisiana to protest the racist actions against the Jena 6, police in nearby Alexandria arrested two admitted Klansmen (one Klanschild and one adult) for driving around town with two nooses hanging out of the back of their pick up truck in order to intimidate and harass protesters. The 16 year-old told police that his entire family was in the Klan and had KKK tatoos as well as brass knuckles in the vehicle. Following the events in Jena, as well as the obvious implication of the act, one would think that no other charge could be given except that of hate crime. Yet, the police have charged the 18 year-old driver with "contributing to the delinquency of a minor" and the passenger with driving while intoxicated. The police report goes to absurd lengths to avoid charging the two with hate crimes as an entry says "Bias Motive: Racial Anti-Black"(another way to say 'hate crime'), leading Alexandria Mayor Jacques Roy to say that he is "looking into whether the incident was a hate crime."

Firstly, let's discuss for a moment what hate crimes are:

Hate crimes differ from conventional crime because they are not directed simply at an individual, but are meant to cause fear and intimidation in an entire group or class of people.

Clearly the case of the noose hangings in Jena and Alexandria seek to intimidate a specific group of people, given the painfully recent history of Jim Crow, and the effect, like motyat points out, is instantaneous to anyone who witnesses it. In 1993, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously in Wisconsin v. Mitchell that

"bias-motivated crimes are more likely to provoke retaliatory crimes, inflict distinct emotional harms on their victims, and incite community unrest.... The State's desire to redress these perceived harms provides an adequate explanation for its penalty-enhancement provision over and above mere disagreement with offenders' beliefs or biases. As Blackstone said long ago, 'it is but reasonable that, among crimes of different natures, those should be most severely punished which are the most destructive of the public safety and happiness."

Thus, there can be no doubt that these actions were anything less than hate crimes.

To me, following motyat's post on the Jena 6, the fact that politicians and members of the criminal justice are willfully ignoring the racist nature of these crimes is pivotal for understanding the disgusting manifestations of racism aka the hanging of nooses and the confidence of not only Klansmen, but just racists shits in general, to have the confidence to rear their ugly heads. In the most recent International Socialist Review, an interview with Friends of Justice director Alan Bean, reveals the impact of the Jena District Attorney's dismissal of the act as youthful shenanigans:

The incendiary situation that sparked four days of racial violence in early December in Jena, Louisiana, was created by the very man who is now prosecuting these cases: District Attorney Reed Walters. Had Walters and Superintendent Roy Breithaupt called a hate crime by its proper name, the students of Jena High School wouldn’t have been forced to resolve issues far beyond their competence or understanding.

Short, out of school suspensions are NOT the way to stop racism nor make an example of the perpetrators of blatently racist acts.

Like the bigoted rhetoric of politicians like Rick Santorum gives confidence to gay-bashers that they are justified, or the confidence that anti-immigrant racists like Tom Tancredo and Lou Dobbs give rise to vigilante violence by groups such as the Minutemen and other extreme right groups, actions by the DA and other public officials who are not willing to take a call a hate crime a hate crime are PART of the problem. As history shows that we can't rely on politicians to end racism, we need to keep fighting like the 20,000 in Jena and other thousands around the rest of the country to end Jim Crow be it from a Klansmen or a politician who gives him the carte blanche.

Hanging from a Hollow Tree

This week is record-breaking in its intensity of racism. It's time to talk about the Jena Six. The assumption for this article is that if you are a regular reader of General, Your Tank is a Powerful Vehicle, you are probably already familiar with the Jena Six, and possibly organizing to support them. If this assumption is not apt, brush up on Jim Crow-era court behavior here.

What concerns me in this article is the recent homogeneity that has appeared in the reaction to activism surrounding the Jena Six. The counterargument to the idea that the Jena Six should be acquitted in self-defense runs as follows: the children who hung the nooses from the "White Tree" to scare off black students (remember, their only crime at this point was to attempt to sit under this tree) "were just playing." It is understandable to doubt that people would actually make this argument, so I provide evidence here and here.

A lot of things could be said at this point. The activist would claim that racism and threats of lynching are not "joking." And she'd be correct. The polemicist would claim that the movement for the freedom of the Jena Six should be blasting the bigots brazen enough to say these things, and he'd be correct, as well.

But this author is a linguist, and so will take those arguments as given, and present a bit of a diversion to point out that there is, theoretically, no such thing as "joking" here. Christopher Potts, a linguist at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, has done a lot of work in recent years on "expressives" the class of linguistic items that contains racial epithets. He argues in his work that "expressives do not so much offer content, as inflict it [emphasis mine --MT]." This means that epithets are not simply words that can be used willy-nilly, but instead have more in common with speech acts.

One defining characteristic about a speech act (and particularly the class of items known as expressives) is that it is immediate, which is to say that, once uttered/completed, its impact is immediate, and there is no going back. Potts illustrates this in his paper "The Expressive Dimension" (available here, though it will be hard-going for the non-linguist once Potts deploys his theoretical machinery) with an ingenious anecdote: a newly-instated superintendent at a mixed-race school district nearly loses his job after saying, in the opening of a speech: "To me, niggers come in all colors. To me, a nigger is someone who doesn't respect himself or others."

Potts notes that the superintendent's intentions were pure, and the then asks the question: why was he unable to redefine the meaning of the epithet, as he was trying to do? Here we begin to mix issues for Potts, but the answer is that once he had said the word, the damage was already done. Potts goes on to show, formally, how this notion can and should be captured in theories of natural language semantics/pragmatics.

The point of all this? It's impossible to joke about lynching, as the rebuttals claim. The very act of hanging nooses from the White Tree inflicts its content in the same way that giving the middle finger makes an American driver instantaneously angry, even if meant lovingly. A joke, by nature, needs to have ironic or humorous content associated with it, but it is that very association which is blocked in the immediacy of displaying a noose in a part of the south where memories of KKK lynchings run thick.

And while that was a long digression, let me say this in conclusion to apologists for white-noose-hangers: your argument is a nonstarter, and I just proved it with science.

Two Blows Against Criminal Justice in America

Following right on the heels of Kenneth Foster's amazing victory against the Texas death machine we have another two strikes against America's justice system. First, Mychal Bell's last remaining conviction was tossed out by a Louisiana judge today, and second, death row prisoner (and law of parties victim) Joseph Lave had his conviction reversed. The victory in Foster's case has pretty clearly both given heart to anti-racist struggles (like the Howard University rally for Mychal and the Jena 6) and forced prosecutors back on their heels. The next step is to push them over.

Tragedy Reveals Hypocrisy of Police VIolence

So, two Oklahoma police officers face up to (and most likely will receive) up to four years in prison for the accidental shooting death of a five year old child. Apparently the officers tried to kill a snake with their gun and the bullet ricocheted and hit the child in the head. This is awful and tragic and the cops were clearly negligent. However, to me this creates a positive precedent that is woefully ignored when, for instance, the victim is black or brown and the shooting is intentional. Not to capitalize on this incident or anything, but this truly shows the bankruptcy and racism of the criminal justice system : accidentally shoot white kid = prison. Intentionally shoot or beat black person (or legally lynch them with the death penalty) = walk, scot free.

What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. Right?

Anyone who has had internet/tv/radio access for the past few months have been unable to avoid the clamor and racist diatribes against Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick. Some may feel that all the anger and backlash is justified given that he entered a guilty plea last Friday. Ok, dog fighting is brutal and Vick has taken responsibility for his actions. That's good enough for me. However, what really burns me is the rampant hypocrisy in the media's (and general public's) attacks on Vick.

Let's put this into context: Paris Hilton: several DUIs, serves some 20 hours in jail. Lindsey Lohan: several DUIs, possession of cocaine (multiple times), posh resort-like 'rehab' clinic. and the biggest whopper, Phil Spector, known gun-toting crazy person and probably MURDERER, still lounges in court and doesn't even make headlines any more.

When you see that white celebrities are getting off relatively scot-free everyday for crimes that young black males are being sent to jail and death row in overwhelming numbers (more black youths sit in jail than in university desks) for crimes they most often don't even commit, the ugliness of racism in the media and in US society cannot be ignored. Ask yourself, if I wouldn't have mentioned Phil Spector, would you have known about his case. I'm sure enraged Beatles/Ramones/Crystals fans aren't using their albums to wipe up shit, or more appropriately blood, in protest against the groundbreaking producer.

Following motyat's post, put Vick's case in the context of the overwhelming, incontrovertible evidence that a) the US is torturing and massacring people from Iraq, to Guantanamo to our own prisons, and b) it has received the green light from the highest offices of our government: who really deserves to heat?