The Wells’ legacy and Pompous Post Racialism

Google is honoring Ida B. Wells-Barnett today for her journalism and activism on behalf of African Americans who were being lynched at alarming rates in this country.  She was born a slave in 1862 and lived until 1931.  How ironic that today we’re addressing issues involving the excessive use of force against African Americans by law enforcement authorities.

Among some white conservative elements there appears to be a protracted, if not profound, attempt to assert that there would be no racial problems eighty four years after Mrs. Wells-Barnett’s death if people would just stop talking about IT.  Witness Fox commentator Bill O’Reilly’s recent rant:

“O’Reilly ripped into liberals who he says are “demonizing” America by saying America is “a country dominated by white supremacy… to keep black Americans down.” And this goes “unchallenged by a cowardly media,” as he put it. He got really teed off as he insisted “there is no organized effort to harm black people by white people,” and then declared, “You want a war? You got a war! I’m not going to sit here any longer and take this garbage.” [Mdite]

The most obvious issue with O’Reilly’s rant is that racism doesn’t have to be organized to be pervasive.  The second problem is that we do have some demons which need to be faced down.

We do need to analyze and act upon information which persistently demonstrates that some police officers treat African Americans differently – out of fear? Out of biases? Out of lack of appropriate training?   One question that keeps rising out of the fog of information regarding the shooting of unarmed black suspects is “Did the officer perceive a greater threat because the suspect was African American?”  (Michael Brown) Or, “Did the officer lack sufficient self control to manage an arrest of an African American suspect?” (Walter Scott) Or to deal with a situation involving African Americans (McKinney, TX)?

Are African Americans treated differently, or abused, in police custody. Texas authorities have been called in to investigate the death of Sandra Bland, arrested in Waller County, who police reported had committed suicide in her jail cell. [ChicagoTrib] The family vociferously disputes this possibility.

Again, white supremacy needn’t be as blatant as that of the Council of Conservative Citizens, or the KKK, or any other associated hate group.  We can see it at work in the sentencing of black and white convicts, as described by a study conducted by researchers from Harvard, the University of Chicago, and Pennsylvania University:

“The researchers divided judges into categories based on level of race bias. To make these results concrete, they compare two examples. There are two identically situated defendants, who differ only by race – one black and one white. If they are sentenced by a judge who is among the least affected by racial bias (meaning in one of the best case scenarios), the black defendant is still 30% more likely to end up in prison. If they are sentenced by judge who is among the most affected by racial bias (one of the worst case scenarios), the black defendant is almost twice as likely to end up in prison.” [TP]

ALL other elements being equal, a black defendant is still 30% more likely to be sentenced to prison than a white defendant. Why?  If we take the discussion out of the realm of the institutional and into the general population we find that racism is far from a minor irritant under American skin.  Perhaps it would be instructive to take a closer look at the nature of white complaints.

One of the more illogical is the fallacious argument of “reverse racism,” which is used to cover a range of territory from opposition to affirmative action plans to the justification of person racial prejudice.  In definitional terms, the assertion fails to differentiate between racism (a social construct) and prejudice/bias (a personal trait.)  Additionally, it all too often relies on broad generalizations based on limited personal information or experience.  Contentions that entire population segments are “lazy,” or “criminal,” or otherwise socially unfit require the speaker to ignore all but that data which substantiates his position.  Yes, the unemployment rate for African Americans in this country is 9.5% [BLS]  However, that obviously means that 90.5% of working age African Americans are, in fact, working – hardly proving that they are “lazy” or disinclined to accept employment.

A variation on the “reverse racism” contention is the “they are taking our jobs” assertion.  This can be quickly, and relatively easily debunked:

“Although many are concerned that immigrants compete against Americans for jobs, the most recent economic evidence suggests that, on average, immigrant workers increase the opportunities and incomes of Americans.  Based on a survey of the academic literature, economists do not tend to find that immigrants cause any sizeable decrease in wages and employment of U.S.-born citizens (Card 2005), and instead may raise wages and lower prices in the aggregate (Ottaviano and Peri 2008; Ottaviano and Peri 2010; Cortes 2008).”  [Brookings]

So, if we do have legitimate questions regarding the interactions between members of minority communities and law enforcement institutions, and at least two of the most common racially based complaints are illogical or downright false, why the current interest in “Our Heritage?”  There’s nothing all that new about this, as Salon explained back in 2013:

“The white Southern narrative — at least in the dominant Southern conservative version — is one of defeat after defeat. First the attempt of white Southerners to create a new nation in which they can be the majority was defeated by the U.S. Army during the Civil War. Doomed to be a perpetual minority in a continental American nation-state, white Southerners managed for a century to create their own state-within-a-state, in which they could collectively lord it over the other major group in the region, African-Americans. But Southern apartheid was shattered by the second defeat, the Civil Rights revolution, which like the Civil War and Reconstruction was symbolized by the dispatching of federal troops to the South. The American patriotism of the white Southerner is therefore deeply problematic. Some opt for jingoistic hyper-Americanism (the lady protesteth too much, methinks) while a shrinking but significant minority prefer the Stars and Bars to the Stars and Stripes.”

It’s that shrinking minority which greeted our first African American President in Oklahoma and Tennessee.

Complete with those Stars and Bars.  And in this instance we may be seeing another element in play.  There are those who cannot efficiently handle the difference between criticism and an attack.  No one is actually attacking American culture.  What is happening is that it is no longer socially acceptable to use the N-word, at least in public. It is no longer socially acceptable to slap Mary Jane on the fanny down at the garage.  It is no longer socially acceptable to call the Gonzales family the W-B term.  It’s true, Native American women take offense at the S-word.  Nor, is it socially acceptable to use the F-word as shorthand for members of the LGBT communities.  In short, it is no longer socially acceptable to view members of ethnic and gender minorities from the Olympian heights of assumed white supremacy.

Those people who are uncomfortable with this state of affairs may be longing to “take our country back.”  But, what do they mean by that statement? 

At one end of the spectrum there are the white nationalists, the fringe groups of the malcontents and the downright disturbed who cheered the actions of the Charleston Church shooter. It is harder to categorize the other delineations on that spectrum of opinion.  There are, of course, those who would happily pepper their conversation with the racial epithets which are no longer useful or appropriate, and who would gladly practice discrimination if it’s in their power to do so.  There are those who would like to use their unacceptable vocabulary (and related ideas) but don’t do so in public, and bristle at the thought they would personally be capable of bias or prejudice.  And there are the insensitive or ignorant who simply don’t know that some words and items are offensive and slip up in situations they later regret. (Example: Tom Petty’s apology for using the CSA battle flag on a 1985 album)

A person may well be suffering from “white supremacy” syndrome if he or she is aware that the CSA (KKK) battle flag is offensive, but waves it anyway because it is emblematic of their discomfort and their longing to return to a time when they weren’t aware the LGBT community existed (outside closets), when African Americans “knew their place,” when everyone spoke English (never since the expansion of the US after the Louisiana Purchase, and questionable before then), and when they could talk about tolerance without actually having to practice it.

So, the contention that we’re “post racial” is as inaccurate as it is pompous. It is little more than a thin layer of Kawamata silk which fails to even barely disguise the efforts to cling to their sense of self-worth on the equally fragile social ladder constructed of outmoded ideas, and outdated vocabulary.

Meanwhile, let’s join the celebration of Ida Baker Wells-Barnett and her legacy of journalism and civic activism.  No flags are required.

Five Questions About The Police and The Community

It shouldn’t take a tragedy to bring attention to local police policies on the use of lethal force, but it does.  The premise of this post is not to argue that community members bear the burden of preventing police misconduct, but that members of the community do have an obligation as citizens to exercise informed oversight of police policies and procedures.

Telling community leaders and other citizens to take yet more time to research and review police practices is relatively easy.  And, as mentioned in a previous post, getting familiar with the mission statement publicized by most police departments is as good a place to start as any.  Once beyond reading the mission statement, and evaluating it in terms of how it might inform policies regarding the use of lethal force and other controversial items, there are some other questions citizens might raise with members of county commissions, city councils, and boards.

#1. How many of the officers in leadership positions received their initial training prior to 1985?  Yes, that’s 29 years ago, but it’s still relevant. Here’s why.  Before the Supreme Court decision in Tennessee v. Garner (1985) a majority of states had a “any felony” policy.  Police were authorized in most jurisdictions to use any force necessary, lethal included, to effect an arrest for any felonious behavior.  Justice White’s opinion place restrictions on this policy stating:

“Where the officer has probable cause to believe that the suspect poses a threat of serious physical harm, either to the officer or to others, it is not constitutionally unreasonable to prevent escape by using deadly force. Thus, if the suspect threatens the officer with a weapon or there is probable cause to believe that he has committed a crime involving the infliction or threatened infliction of serious physical harm, deadly force may be used if necessary to prevent escape,…”[FindLaw]

In other words, after 1985 there must be a reasonable expectation that the suspect poses a serious threat of physical harm to the officers or others, or has already caused serious harm to others.

Training programs are drafted and administered by senior law enforcement officers, and it’s not unusual to have senior officers conduct the training and perform the administrative reviews of incidents involving the use of force.  If the law enforcement agency has an in-service training program emphasizing how seriously the department takes such incidents, and how carefully it will conduct reviews of the use of  force, then problems associated with the holdover effect of pre-1985 attitudes can be mitigated.

It’s probably safe to assert that in any institution composed of human beings there will be those who cling to the attitudes of the Good Old Days When…. However, in terms of the unlimited use of lethal force and other controversial practices, those good old days are over and have been for the last 29 years.  In the mean time care should have been taken to erase some of the attitudes associated with those not-so-good days. Has the in-service training program addressed the upgrading of current  information and re-training for senior officers?  There’s been much palaver about Police Culture, but if questions aren’t raised about the contributors to an unproductive culture then we’d ought not be surprised when the answers don’t please us. This leads to the second question.

#2. How much emphasis does the law enforcement agency place on training in community relations?  The Nevada Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training has a 16 week training curriculum for category I cadets. Performance Skills consume about 291 hours. Patrol Operations and Investigations  take up 165 hours. Law and Legal Procedures average 83.5 hours, Administration and Examinations average 72.5 hours, and Functions of a Peace Officer average 67 hours.   Nevada’s curriculum description (pdf) requires POST trained officers  pass a written examination (70%) on the following topics:

“(1) Define “traditional/incident-driven policing,” “community-oriented policing (COP),” “problem-oriented policing (POP), “CompStat” and “Intelligence Led Policing (ILP) (2)  Identify the four steps of the S.A.R.A. problem-solving model (3) Identify the differences between the traditional aspects of policing and community-oriented policing  (4) List the six most important groups with which to partner.”

What we know is that a Nevada POST graduate will be able to score at least 70% on a written examination regarding these models of police work.   What we don’t know is how effective the law enforcement agency which hires the young recruit will be at helping the new officer reach out to those six (at least) most important groups. Do we know the proportionality of in-service training programs? Do we know, for example, the relative amount of time expended on physical or fire arms training when compared to in-service education on public and community relations?  And thus, our third question.

#3.  Does the local police department or sheriff’s office have a formalized way to interact with elements of the community?  The Las Vegas MPD has a Multi-Cultural Advisory Committee which meets monthly.  The Washoe County Sheriff’s Office has a Community Relations Section.  In an ideal world, with adequate funding and resources, a law enforcement agency would have an advisory committee enhanced by a structured way to get recommendations from the committee to all levels of the law enforcement agency in a timely fashion.  A reasonable question to ask of city or county officials is what systems are in place to regularly gather information and opinions from the public at large, and minority populations in particular, which will help officers engage with the community more positively? And, then follow up the initial inquiry with a second one — How is this system evaluated, and how often?  The next question concerns whether the system works.

#4.  How does the local law enforcement agency process, evaluate, and resolve issues between personnel and members of the public?  Larger law enforcement agencies have formalized procedures for processing complaints, and IADs for investigating the validity of the allegations.  Even the best organizations will receive complaints, and this is all the more reason for the agency to have a written complaint response policy.  The Washoe County Sheriff’s office has an Office of Public Integrity for this purpose.  The LVMPD has a Citizen Review Board.  Before lamenting the lack of citizen complaint resolution, check to see if your local law enforcement agency has a formalized complaint resolution process, who’s in charge of it, and how often is is evaluated?

Drilling down to an obvious source of complaints, such as abuse of authority, misconduct, or downright brutality, can we evaluate community relations by the numbers?

#5. What measures have been taken by the local law enforcement agency to maximize communication with the community?  However important it may be — and it is — to have a police department which looks like the community at large, it’s equally important to have a department which knows how to communicate with that public.  Does the agency recruiting and retention process encourage members of minority groups to seek employment with the department?  How is this evaluated? And, how often? The how is important, but so is the when.

Another line of inquiry in this regard concerns when officers have an opportunity to interact with the public.  Are officers isolated in vehicles during their shifts, and accessible to the public only in presentation, ride along, or safety presentations?  How and in what circumstances does the department encourage interactions?  Traveling down this thread a step further: When is the leadership of the department available to the public?  In organized public forums? In press conferences? In periodic site inspections? All of the above?

Public officials should be not only able but willing to answer these, and other, questions for members of the public.  Being a law enforcement officer is one of the toughest jobs in the country, and one of the most dangerous.  A complementary effort on the part of both the agencies and the public should help those POST graduates perform to the best of their abilities, and provide regularly evaluated systems, structures, and practices which are conducive to good community relations.