The past four months have been tremendous for our species. It may as well have been a chapter from Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace.
On May 25th, George Floyd was killed by a police officer kneeling on his neck for eight minutes and forty-six seconds; it is tempting to look at this as an isolated incident that sparked a wave of social upheaval. Tragic as the event is, it is only the tip of a very large iceberg. Trayvon Martin, Rodney King, Martin Luther King Jr.: these are household names but they are also among the highest profile individuals to suffer from racism in America. It is one aspect, one symptom of attitudes that go back hundreds of years, and it is expressed in many other ways as well.
It’s easy to look back on these events and wonder “have we changed?”. For all the visibility of MLK’s “I have a dream” speech to King’s “can’t we all just get along?”, it seems as if shockingly little progress has been made when a story like George Floyd’s comes to the fore of consciousness. The worst part of it is these are only the cases everyone remembers. In a June 5th statement on equality Most Reverend Gerald M. Barbarito calls the present crisis “the virus of racism” [1]. To me, it is a virus of racism, because it is expressed in many other ways that are perhaps harder to notice.
A recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America notes that “a diversity-innovation paradox” exists where “although underrepresented scholars in science-related fields are more likely to innovate, they’re also less likely than their majority-group peers to earn influential academic positions”. The study concludes that “this higher rate of innovation is a result of the unique perspectives and experiences brought by [minority scholars], who ‘often draw relations between ideas and concepts that have been traditionally missed or ignored’” [2]. Although minorities are more likely to innovate within their scientific field due their unique perspective, they are less likely to be promoted to influential positions in that field.
This anti-minority bias is also presented financially; Luca D’Urbino notes in The Economist that “the median household net wealth of African-Americans is $18,000, a tenth of the wealth of white Americans. The ratio has not changed since 1990” [3].
Steven Roberts, a Stanford University psychology professor, outlines in a recent YouTube video seven factors influencing racism in America:
Categorization: we tend to group people into categories, and then to think of all members of a given category as being alike.
Factions: we are embedded within these categories and tend to treat people belonging to our own category better than those belonging to an out-group.
Segregation: groups tend to be separated, whereas having greater diversity provides more opportunities to challenge racism.
Hierarchy: dominant groups tend to view themselves as most important, at the top of the ladder, whereas marginalized groups are viewed as ‘less than’. As an example, 98% of U.S. presidents have been white.
Power: those at the top of the hierarchy in the U.S. are in a powerful position to transmit beliefs and shape law.
Media: tends to present categories in a certain way, often distorted from reality
Passivism: in America, the standard response to racism is to do nothing, to be passive. In Roberts’ estimation this is perhaps the biggest contributing factor to the continuation of racism in America.
The five and a half minute video is informative and worth watching [4]. It provides a framework or lens through which to view history.
Thomas Jefferson, founding father and third president of the United States, is often cited as a plantation slave owner. Brent Staples writes that “plantation wives in the slave-era South resorted to willful blindness when their husbands conscripted black women as sexual servants and filled the household with mixed-race children who inevitably resembled the master. Thomas Jefferson’s wife, Martha, was several years dead when he set off on this path, fathering at least six children with Martha’s enslaved black half sister, Sally Hemmings […] slave owners like the Jeffersons often held their own black children, aunts, uncles, and cousins in bondage […] Jefferson’s baronial mountaintop estate was just like any other plantation when it came to matters of sexual conduct” [5].
It is easy to view stories like the one above from a comfortable remove: hundreds of years ago attitudes were different and surely we have moved on as a society. This once was my own viewpoint. Upon further examination, this view is incorrect. History was once current events. The same attitudes resulting in power structures which enabled Thomas Jefferson to own slaves and even to father children who were marginalized and ignored by his own white relatives can be found in the events of recent decades.
Orlando Patterson draws a connection between brutality in law enforcement, mass incarceration, and racism amidst the beginning of the United States. He writes that “America is the only modern nation that had slavery in its midst from the very beginning […] as in the slave system of ancient Athens, the American idea of freedom sprung from the cauldron of slavery in a seemingly contradictory way […] over time, with the expansion of political rights for poor whites, citizenship in the American South came to mean belonging to the ‘superior’ race, which defined blacks as the group that could never belong but whose necessary presence, for essential labor, defined the minimum condition of inclusion […] elements of these early developments persist, especially in the attitudes of police toward minorities and immigrant communities. Those who are thought not to belong are too often viewed as an enemy to be controlled through show of force.” Shifting the lens to the past 50 years, Patterson contends that “closely related to the disproportionate killing of blacks by police is the rise of mass incarceration in America since the early 1970s and the disparate imprisonment of black Americans, who make up about 40% of the nation’s 2.3 million prisoners” and, disturbingly, “imprisonment has typically increased after periods when African-Americans made significant economic, social and political gains” [6].
The factors that Roberts points out are clearly visible in both Jefferson’s plantation estate and in tragic events such as those surrounding George Floyd. There is a horrifying divide between what the U.S. aspires to be, a nation of equals in which the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are honored, and racism throughout its history and foundation. How to become whole?
“Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the land. Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied” (Matthew 5:5-6, NAB). So runs the promise of the beatitudes. Simply willing goodness into existence is not enough: clearly, action is necessary. Anything less would be to slip back into the passivity Roberts describes, perpetuating a system that has led to many avoidable deaths. Is it possible to carry the spirit proclaimed during the Sermon on the Mount into action which precipitates positive change?
On March 12, 2019, Latasha Walton, a friend of mine, was shot and killed by a police officer during a traffic stop [7]. She was the mother of two children. At her funeral there was an outpouring of emotion from her sons and her extended family. Present outside were police officers. It was a moment to grieve as a community. There were no solutions given during the speeches, no easy answers. It was very human.
The type of grief this causes lasts for a long time. It’s both personal and collective. Perhaps a tool we have in the fight against racism is to recognize the light in each other. Tara Brach writes “a practice that evolves us (and our larger society) toward inclusive loving is to intentionally deepen our relationships with others of difference” [8]. Also, that “the world is divided into those who think they are right” [9].
Being wrong is freeing. “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:32, NAB). Coming into alignment with the truth first requires acceptance that one is wrong. In a heartfelt YouTube video, Van Jones notes the incredible response to George Floyd’s killing as a moment of real change [10]. Now more than ever is an opportunity to see beyond differences, past barriers, to honor the humanness of each other, and to interface with those who are different in order to break down viruses of racism. This is not a matter of appropriateness: it is a matter of life or death.
As a white 39 year old male, I am deeply sorry for the generations of trauma my race has inflicted on others. I hope we are able to steer back from racial injustice, from being divided into being right, and that we are able to celebrate the vast array of journeys that are present in our country, regardless of difference.
[5] Staples, B. (2020, Spring) The Legacy of Monticello’s Black First Family. The University of Chicago Magazine. (Original work published July 4, 2018 in the New York Times).
[6] Patterson, O. (2020, June 6) The Long Reach Of Racism in the U.S. The Wall Street Journal.
It's a tough conversation to have, I think, but it's extremely worth having.
If the crux of the argument is 'criminalizing calling the police when not actually necessary is wrong' then yeah I agree.
But I personally hate that that is the correct position to take, because seriously fuck that lady.
EDIT: The thing is, though, does this also apply to things like swatting? Because that's exactly what she wanted to have happen to that man.
If you're an abolitionist, then it applies to things like swatting as well.
The way I've seen it presented is that it's a mistake to try to fix the problems of over-policing by creating new crimes and harsher punishments. People using the police to try to murder people should not be convicted of a crime not because they're not doing something horrible, but because doing so will reinforce the power of a system that allows you to call a team of murderers to someone's house.
We all believe that the racist NYPD would have potentially killed Christian Cooper had they shown up in time. And yet we still look to them for justice. I don’t trust that system. Ever. Why do we believe this racist, violent system can be the solution to racism and violence?
It's a tough conversation to have, I think, but it's extremely worth having.
If the crux of the argument is 'criminalizing calling the police when not actually necessary is wrong' then yeah I agree.
But I personally hate that that is the correct position to take, because seriously fuck that lady.
EDIT: The thing is, though, does this also apply to things like swatting? Because that's exactly what she wanted to have happen to that man.
If you're an abolitionist, then it applies to things like swatting as well.
The way I've seen it presented is that it's a mistake to try to fix the problems of over-policing by creating new crimes and harsher punishments. People using the police to try to murder people should not be convicted of a crime not because they're not doing something horrible, but because doing so will reinforce the power of a system that allows you to call a team of murderers to someone's house.
We all believe that the racist NYPD would have potentially killed Christian Cooper had they shown up in time. And yet we still look to them for justice. I don’t trust that system. Ever. Why do we believe this racist, violent system can be the solution to racism and violence?
Ehhh.. POLICE aren't justice. They're supposed to collect the information and let the judiciary do their thing.
EDIT. I mean a hypothetical police that works. Not the tragedy that is US cops
It's a tough conversation to have, I think, but it's extremely worth having.
If the crux of the argument is 'criminalizing calling the police when not actually necessary is wrong' then yeah I agree.
But I personally hate that that is the correct position to take, because seriously fuck that lady.
EDIT: The thing is, though, does this also apply to things like swatting? Because that's exactly what she wanted to have happen to that man.
If you're an abolitionist, then it applies to things like swatting as well.
The way I've seen it presented is that it's a mistake to try to fix the problems of over-policing by creating new crimes and harsher punishments. People using the police to try to murder people should not be convicted of a crime not because they're not doing something horrible, but because doing so will reinforce the power of a system that allows you to call a team of murderers to someone's house.
We all believe that the racist NYPD would have potentially killed Christian Cooper had they shown up in time. And yet we still look to them for justice. I don’t trust that system. Ever. Why do we believe this racist, violent system can be the solution to racism and violence?
Ehhh.. POLICE aren't justice. They're supposed to collect the information and let the judiciary do their thing.
EDIT. I mean a hypothetical police that works. Not the tragedy that is US cops
The judiciary in this country has plenty of blood on its hands as well, is the point
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Munkus BeaverYou don't have to attend every argument you are invited to.Philosophy: Stoicism. Politics: Democratic SocialistRegistered User, ClubPAregular
I think what that woman did should count as attempted manslaughter, or at least reckless endangerment.
Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but dies in the process.
one necessary step toward dismantling the carceral state is demonstrating the reality of its casual cruelty for the broader (white) public; one way to do this is to turn it on white people the same way it's turned on people of color
throw the book at her is what I'm saying here
it was the smallest on the list but
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
In the US the police and the justice system are so closely intertwined that they might as well be the same organization.
One of the reasons it's so hard to hold cops accountable is because a lot of prosecutors would rather not press charges against police because they work so closely with the police department and don't want to sabotage that relationship.
It's a tough conversation to have, I think, but it's extremely worth having.
If the crux of the argument is 'criminalizing calling the police when not actually necessary is wrong' then yeah I agree.
But I personally hate that that is the correct position to take, because seriously fuck that lady.
EDIT: The thing is, though, does this also apply to things like swatting? Because that's exactly what she wanted to have happen to that man.
If you're an abolitionist, then it applies to things like swatting as well.
The way I've seen it presented is that it's a mistake to try to fix the problems of over-policing by creating new crimes and harsher punishments. People using the police to try to murder people should not be convicted of a crime not because they're not doing something horrible, but because doing so will reinforce the power of a system that allows you to call a team of murderers to someone's house.
We all believe that the racist NYPD would have potentially killed Christian Cooper had they shown up in time. And yet we still look to them for justice. I don’t trust that system. Ever. Why do we believe this racist, violent system can be the solution to racism and violence?
Ehhh.. POLICE aren't justice. They're supposed to collect the information and let the judiciary do their thing.
EDIT. I mean a hypothetical police that works. Not the tragedy that is US cops
The judiciary in this country has plenty of blood on its hands as well, is the point
True. I mean.. I'd still not be above using the system to try and change the system until I can have a meaningful difference.
Edit: as one course of action among many
Because that's been the right wing play since forever, and it unfortunately works.
But I guess part of that right wing play is closing that way off for anyone else but them after they used it.. Hm
autono-wally, erotibot300 on
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WACriminalDying Is Easy, Young ManLiving Is HarderRegistered Userregular
This is always the problem when you start talking about abolishing police, or abolishing any sort of pervasive system that people have lived with their entire lives -- it feels like you're saying we shouldn't address the problems those systems are ostensibly intended to address, when really what you're saying is that we need a different way to address them.
What book do you think is going to get thrown at this woman? Who do you think is throwing that book?
We're not going to terrify people into realizing the criminal justice system is bad by throwing the book at people that call the police to do a racist hit. Historically we know that hitting people with everything the justice system can throw out does more harm than good, and I would also argue that an argument that says, "we need to show people how fucked up the system is by targeting that fucked up system at them," is fucked. The answer to questions like, "why did they arrest the guy that shot up the movie theater and kill the kid walking home from the gas station," can't be, "they should have killed the guy who shot up the movie theater," because it means they're still killing the kid walking home from the gas station.
If you disagree with the idea that she shouldn't be charged, that's fine. The author of the thread is asking you to think about what that means, and examine why you feel that way. If we want to make big structural changes to how the American justice system works, we're going to run into more and more of these questions, however. And there are people, like Josie Duffy Rice, who have been working at answering these questions for much longer than most of us. It's worth listening to them, even if the ideas seem antithetical to what we think justice is.
It's a tough conversation to have, I think, but it's extremely worth having.
In a society where criminals and perceived-as criminals are treated a certain way, not treating Amy Cooper that way means that society isn't considering her a criminal. And that would be the worst outcome, certainly, because it would send the message to others that that behaviour is tolerated, accepted even. Is that what you want?
Until the carceral system is abolished, we should treat all people who perform evil deeds as criminals. Because justice is not an ideal, it's a way to deter more evil deeds.
What book do you think is going to get thrown at this woman? Who do you think is throwing that book?
We're not going to terrify people into realizing the criminal justice system is bad by throwing the book at people that call the police to do a racist hit. Historically we know that hitting people with everything the justice system can throw out does more harm than good, and I would also argue that an argument that says, "we need to show people how fucked up the system is by targeting that fucked up system at them," is fucked. The answer to questions like, "why did they arrest the guy that shot up the movie theater and kill the kid walking home from the gas station," can't be, "they should have killed the guy who shot up the movie theater," because it means they're still killing the kid walking home from the gas station.
If you disagree with the idea that she shouldn't be charged, that's fine. The author of the thread is asking you to think about what that means, and examine why you feel that way. If we want to make big structural changes to how the American justice system works, we're going to run into more and more of these questions, however. And there are people, like Josie Duffy Rice, who have been working at answering these questions for much longer than most of us. It's worth listening to them, even if the ideas seem antithetical to what we think justice is.
Framing it as 'people we don't like' is pretty bad imo. She's treating this person as someone with bad viewpoints, when what happened was actually an attempted lynching. Which, when all the dismantling is done and whatever accountability remains, is something I would still like to see consequences. Her act of calling the police was a literal, actual hate crime.
I'm in favor of dismantling the criminal justice system, the same way I'm in favor of incredibly strict gun control. Which is, if you try to apply it the same, across the board, at the same time, you're going to end up with a LOT of dead disenfranchised folk.
I think dismantling the criminal justice system is good and needs to happen. I'm strictly against starting that process with Amy Cooper and allowing the general act of privilege of wielding police as a weapon.
She's not just framing this woman as "someone we don't like," and even framing her as an inhuman monster doesn't change her underlying point there, which is that abolitionist movements are meant to free even the worst, and questioning what justice means without the current carceral system means we have to deal with what that means for them as well.
And I don't think she means to argue this process needs to start with Amy Cooper, either. Her argument is that if you believe that structural changes need to happen, that includes people like Amy Cooper, and, as I've seen argued by others online, that it includes the cops who killed Breonna Taylor as well. I don't know if I'm comfortable with that, either! It's worth a conversation, though, and it's worth thinking about.
It's a tough conversation to have, I think, but it's extremely worth having.
In a society where criminals and perceived-as criminals are treated a certain way, not treating Amy Cooper that way means that society isn't considering her a criminal. And that would be the worst outcome, certainly, because it would send the message to others that that behaviour is tolerated, accepted even. Is that what you want?
Until the carceral system is abolished, we should treat all people who perform evil deeds as criminals. Because justice is not an ideal, it's a way to deter more evil deeds.
The point abolitionists are making is that the current system as it exists is a way to punish severely many millions of people, and does little if anything at all to deter actual evil.
Trying to incarcerate more people and dole out worse punishments will never work, because the system doesn't function at any level. It will never treat everyone equally because it was designed to make that impossible. It is a one-way ratchet of horribleness, and throwing more people into it won't make it less bad for anyone. It'll just mean more police, more prisons, and more pain.
PiptheFairFrequently not in boats.Registered Userregular
History channel reminded me that today is the anniversary of Marsha p Johnson’s murder
Please be gay and do crimes. Also stonewall was riot
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FencingsaxIt is difficult to get a man to understand, when his salary depends upon his not understandingGNU Terry PratchettRegistered Userregular
I think that one of the most important aspects of a fair and just system is equality under the law. If the rich white woman attempting to SWAT a black guy is where we go first, we aren't going to go anywhere. If those in power feel, even for the slightest of fractions, the way everyone else does, it is an opportunity for change. She isn't innocent of the crimes she committed, she absolutely tried to use the state to get a guy beaten at best, and lynched at worst.
if you're against the police in general you're not allowed to call the police on some random white lady for being racist. seems pretty basic
I mean I think the point (and pooro's post explained this way better than I ever could) is that right now there is no other option and so it's actually a really complicated question.
I don't think the question is "Should this lady be incarcerated?" until a different question is asked and answered.
"What is the goal of incarceration?" Is it punishment? Rehabilitation? Locking a person away from society so they can no longer cause damage to the people in that society? Realistically, it cannot be all 3.
My cousin was locked up for 4 years because he got into a verbal spat with his then-girlfriend, and in the process of trying to get her to stop attacking him, she fell into a table and got injured. My cousin was charged and plead out a deal because his lawyer told him to do so. At his parole hearing, he was asked if he was rehabilitated, and my cousin said his answer was, "Is that why I'm here? Nobody's done a good job of explaining what prison is for." and the parole board had no answer. His parole was granted, but he just views the whole incident as losing 4 years of his life. He learned no lesson, he served no greater good in his incarceration, and there was nothing to protect from him. We're all pretty sure his only crime was being Mexican.
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HacksawJ. Duggan Esq.Wrestler at LawRegistered Userregular
I just saw that it's 4 years today since Philando Castille. I still physically react when I remember that video and the fact that the scum that murdered him got off, got severance pay and even cashed in his unused vacation time.
MaddocI'm Bobbin Threadbare, are you my mother?Registered Userregular
Yeah it's frustrating to think about because that lady is for sure terrible
But like at what point do you want legal punishment for her just because it feels like something bad should happen to her, does it accomplish anything else
This applies pretty broadly, as well, and it's a difficult subject as crimes get more serious because the truth is that our system doesn't rehabilitate anybody
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Shortytouching the meatIntergalactic Cool CourtRegistered Userregular
I don't think the question is "Should this lady be incarcerated?" until a different question is asked and answered.
"What is the goal of incarceration?" Is it punishment? Rehabilitation? Locking a person away from society so they can no longer cause damage to the people in that society? Realistically, it cannot be all 3.
My cousin was locked up for 4 years because he got into a verbal spat with his then-girlfriend, and in the process of trying to get her to stop attacking him, she fell into a table and got injured. My cousin was charged and plead out a deal because his lawyer told him to do so. At his parole hearing, he was asked if he was rehabilitated, and my cousin said his answer was, "Is that why I'm here? Nobody's done a good job of explaining what prison is for." and the parole board had no answer. His parole was granted, but he just views the whole incident as losing 4 years of his life. He learned no lesson, he served no greater good in his incarceration, and there was nothing to protect from him. We're all pretty sure his only crime was being Mexican.
Most people would say that the goal of the prison system is reform through punishment and would flatly refuse to accept that this is nonsense and doesn't actually work
Yeah it's frustrating to think about because that lady is for sure terrible
But like at what point do you want legal punishment for her just because it feels like something bad should happen to her, does it accomplish anything else
This applies pretty broadly, as well, and it's a difficult subject as crimes get more serious because the truth is that our system doesn't rehabilitate anybody
I'm still sort of working through the feelings I have about this kind of thing
On one hand, I think we should do away with police and prisons, or at bare minimum police and prisons as we currently understand them, and that would mean treating people who try to racistly abuse 911 services with more dignity and compassion than we presently treat criminals
On the other hand, I'm not sure if keeping a wealthy white woman from facing the established consequences of trying to exploit a violent, racist police force to threaten a man's life because he asked her to leash her dog is really my #1 priority when it comes to reforming the justice system
The part I have trouble with, personally, is trying to figure out what the consequences are
Because like, what are we accomplishing aside from "doing a bad thing to a person who, admittedly, might deserve something bad happening to them"
And I don't really have an answer, and it feels incredibly hollow
I'm no expert on the subject, but with this crime in particular a good place to start would be reworking/disbanding the police so that she couldn't have pulled her bullshit in the first place
Not to erase her culpability, but her crime was only possible because the police are violent and racist and she knew it
The part I have trouble with, personally, is trying to figure out what the consequences are
Because like, what are we accomplishing aside from "doing a bad thing to a person who, admittedly, might deserve something bad happening to them"
And I don't really have an answer, and it feels incredibly hollow
I'm no expert on the subject, but with this crime in particular a good place to start would be reworking the police so that she couldn't have pulled her bullshit in the first place
Not to erase her culpability, but her crime was only possible because the police are violent and racist and she knew it
Yeah, as far as I'm concerned, abolishing and rebuilding the system of policing in this country is a good first step, and that's where I'm directing most of my mental energy right now
What comes after that, reforming prisons and incarceration and rehabilitation, should probably come after people aren't getting gunned down in the streets by the state anymore
The part I have trouble with, personally, is trying to figure out what the consequences are
Because like, what are we accomplishing aside from "doing a bad thing to a person who, admittedly, might deserve something bad happening to them"
And I don't really have an answer, and it feels incredibly hollow
I'm no expert on the subject, but with this crime in particular a good place to start would be reworking the police so that she couldn't have pulled her bullshit in the first place
Not to erase her culpability, but her crime was only possible because the police are violent and racist and she knew it
Yeah, as far as I'm concerned, abolishing and rebuilding the system of policing in this country is a good first step, and that's where I'm directing most of my mental energy right now
What comes after that, reforming prisons and incarceration and rehabilitation, should probably come after people aren't getting gunned down in the streets by the state anymore
Can you do one without the other? My thought is that the "goal" if you want to call it that is to use the threat of imprisonment to deter crime. They seem too fully interlinked (which is part of the problem to begin with I suppose) to really do separately.
But it also sort of sidesteps the question entirely
Sure, but that's sort of the thing
When a crime happens, we're currently wired to want the criminal to suffer harm that's in some way proportional to the harm they inflicted. That feels good, but realistically it doesn't help much of anything. In my opinion at least, what we should move toward is a system where when a crime is committed, we focus on making the victim as whole as possible and doing what we can to prevent the crime from happening again. Sometimes that might mean isolating someone from normal society for some period of time while we work with them to figure out how to keep them from repeating their crime; other times it might mean recognizing that the law itself was unjust in the first place and needs reworking, and everything else in between.
Hurting a racist criminal through punishment doesn't accomplish either of those goals. The only one it even attempts is the second one, and it doesn't do a very good job of it.
The part I have trouble with, personally, is trying to figure out what the consequences are
Because like, what are we accomplishing aside from "doing a bad thing to a person who, admittedly, might deserve something bad happening to them"
And I don't really have an answer, and it feels incredibly hollow
I'm no expert on the subject, but with this crime in particular a good place to start would be reworking the police so that she couldn't have pulled her bullshit in the first place
Not to erase her culpability, but her crime was only possible because the police are violent and racist and she knew it
Yeah, as far as I'm concerned, abolishing and rebuilding the system of policing in this country is a good first step, and that's where I'm directing most of my mental energy right now
What comes after that, reforming prisons and incarceration and rehabilitation, should probably come after people aren't getting gunned down in the streets by the state anymore
Can you do one without the other? My thought is that the "goal" if you want to call it that is to use the threat of imprisonment to deter crime. They seem too fully interlinked (which is part of the problem to begin with I suppose) to really do separately.
I think one necessarily leads to the other, absolutely, but I think something as huge as "reforming the entire justice system" in a country like this is gonna have to be done in steps
And to me, the first and most immediate step is without a doubt "abolish/defund the police"
If the consequences we have for committing crimes are wrong or counterproductive, I'm certainly willing to read or listen to what smart people have said would be better ones. That makes sense to me. "Let's not charge people for crimes they are on camera committing in the meantime" seems... off topic? I think I get it that they're saying "What if you don't feel like the new justice system doesn't punish people like this one enough?" and that could be a fair question... if you had the guidelines for what would happen to such a person prepared. It seems more like the tweeter is baiting angry reactions instead, to prove a point that... people get mad at attempted conspiracies to commit murder?
If the consequences we have for committing crimes are wrong or counterproductive, I'm certainly willing to read or listen to what smart people have said would be better ones. That makes sense to me. "Let's not charge people for crimes they are on camera committing in the meantime" seems... off topic? I think I get it that they're saying "What if you don't feel like the new justice system doesn't punish people like this one enough?" and that could be a fair question... if you had the guidelines for what would happen to such a person prepared. It seems more like the tweeter is baiting angry reactions instead, to prove a point that... people get mad at attempted conspiracies to commit murder?
I don't think that's a fair reading of their tweets at all
Something we've seen a lot of in the past month+ is people saying "abolish the police" in one breath, and "arrest [for example] Breonna Taylor's killers" in the next. There's an undeniable friction there that I think is generally going interrogated. It's asking a broken system to be a remedy for itself. If you want police to arrest Taylor's killers and for them to go to prison, then you have a tricky needle to thread if you honestly want to call yourself a police or prison abolitionist. If those principles are meaningful then they must apply in the worst cases.
Which, like I said before to me it's a matter of priorities. In principle I agree that the people that murdered Breonna Taylor should face a more restorative form of justice; in reality, that alternative justice system isn't gonna sprout up overnight, and in the meantime I think there's better places to focus your energy than saving those shitbags from the violent systems that they voluntarily perpetuated. But, at the same time, that friction still exists and I don't think it's inappropriate to call it out and ask people to contend with it.
If the consequences we have for committing crimes are wrong or counterproductive, I'm certainly willing to read or listen to what smart people have said would be better ones. That makes sense to me. "Let's not charge people for crimes they are on camera committing in the meantime" seems... off topic? I think I get it that they're saying "What if you don't feel like the new justice system doesn't punish people like this one enough?" and that could be a fair question... if you had the guidelines for what would happen to such a person prepared. It seems more like the tweeter is baiting angry reactions instead, to prove a point that... people get mad at attempted conspiracies to commit murder?
I don't think that's a fair reading of their tweets at all
Something we've seen a lot of in the past month+ is people saying "abolish the police" in one breath, and "arrest [for example] Breonna Taylor's killers" in the next. There's an undeniable friction there that I think is generally going interrogated. It's asking a broken system to be a remedy for itself. If you want police to arrest Taylor's killers and for them to go to prison, then you have a tricky needle to thread if you honestly want to call yourself a police or prison abolitionist. If those principles are meaningful then they must apply in the worst cases.
Which, like I said before to me it's a matter of priorities. In principle I agree that the people that murdered Breonna Taylor should face a more restorative form of justice; in reality, that alternative justice system isn't gonna sprout up overnight, and in the meantime I think there's better places to focus your energy than saving those shitbags from the violent systems that they voluntarily perpetuated. But, at the same time, that friction still exists and I don't think it's inappropriate to call it out and ask people to contend with it.
Okay, that does make sense but still. It's like saying "let's abolish money" (for lots of good reasons) but not having a barter system that everyone understands and can use in its place (or WHATEVER system, don't get hung up on that), so people just start starving on day one. We don't HAVE a new system, so even if the goal is 100% to get one, I don't think "let's start not punishing crimes, like say, this hate crime" is worth saying at all.
On the 4th of July there was an attempted lynching near Bloomington, Indiana. Multiple white men, some sporting Confederate flags and shouting "white power" threatened to lynch a black man that had gone out to a local lake with a group of friends to watch the lunar eclipse that night. There's cellphone video of the encounter and it's fairly intense.
Tonight there was a BLM protest in Bloomington and two people were struck by a vehicle, one of them being carried on the hood of the car for two blocks before being violently thrown to the street when the car made a hard turn. She's currently in the hospital with serious injuries. A Twitter thread from a local community radio station (spoilered because it contains a non-graphic picture of the woman on the hood of the vehicle before it speeds away):
So I guess this is just the standard playbook if you take issue with a protest now. Go and plough through them with a couple of tonnes of metal and hope you get a few murders under your belt.
Posts
The past four months have been tremendous for our species. It may as well have been a chapter from Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace.
On May 25th, George Floyd was killed by a police officer kneeling on his neck for eight minutes and forty-six seconds; it is tempting to look at this as an isolated incident that sparked a wave of social upheaval. Tragic as the event is, it is only the tip of a very large iceberg. Trayvon Martin, Rodney King, Martin Luther King Jr.: these are household names but they are also among the highest profile individuals to suffer from racism in America. It is one aspect, one symptom of attitudes that go back hundreds of years, and it is expressed in many other ways as well.
It’s easy to look back on these events and wonder “have we changed?”. For all the visibility of MLK’s “I have a dream” speech to King’s “can’t we all just get along?”, it seems as if shockingly little progress has been made when a story like George Floyd’s comes to the fore of consciousness. The worst part of it is these are only the cases everyone remembers. In a June 5th statement on equality Most Reverend Gerald M. Barbarito calls the present crisis “the virus of racism” [1]. To me, it is a virus of racism, because it is expressed in many other ways that are perhaps harder to notice.
A recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America notes that “a diversity-innovation paradox” exists where “although underrepresented scholars in science-related fields are more likely to innovate, they’re also less likely than their majority-group peers to earn influential academic positions”. The study concludes that “this higher rate of innovation is a result of the unique perspectives and experiences brought by [minority scholars], who ‘often draw relations between ideas and concepts that have been traditionally missed or ignored’” [2]. Although minorities are more likely to innovate within their scientific field due their unique perspective, they are less likely to be promoted to influential positions in that field.
This anti-minority bias is also presented financially; Luca D’Urbino notes in The Economist that “the median household net wealth of African-Americans is $18,000, a tenth of the wealth of white Americans. The ratio has not changed since 1990” [3].
Steven Roberts, a Stanford University psychology professor, outlines in a recent YouTube video seven factors influencing racism in America:
The five and a half minute video is informative and worth watching [4]. It provides a framework or lens through which to view history.
Thomas Jefferson, founding father and third president of the United States, is often cited as a plantation slave owner. Brent Staples writes that “plantation wives in the slave-era South resorted to willful blindness when their husbands conscripted black women as sexual servants and filled the household with mixed-race children who inevitably resembled the master. Thomas Jefferson’s wife, Martha, was several years dead when he set off on this path, fathering at least six children with Martha’s enslaved black half sister, Sally Hemmings […] slave owners like the Jeffersons often held their own black children, aunts, uncles, and cousins in bondage […] Jefferson’s baronial mountaintop estate was just like any other plantation when it came to matters of sexual conduct” [5].
It is easy to view stories like the one above from a comfortable remove: hundreds of years ago attitudes were different and surely we have moved on as a society. This once was my own viewpoint. Upon further examination, this view is incorrect. History was once current events. The same attitudes resulting in power structures which enabled Thomas Jefferson to own slaves and even to father children who were marginalized and ignored by his own white relatives can be found in the events of recent decades.
Orlando Patterson draws a connection between brutality in law enforcement, mass incarceration, and racism amidst the beginning of the United States. He writes that “America is the only modern nation that had slavery in its midst from the very beginning […] as in the slave system of ancient Athens, the American idea of freedom sprung from the cauldron of slavery in a seemingly contradictory way […] over time, with the expansion of political rights for poor whites, citizenship in the American South came to mean belonging to the ‘superior’ race, which defined blacks as the group that could never belong but whose necessary presence, for essential labor, defined the minimum condition of inclusion […] elements of these early developments persist, especially in the attitudes of police toward minorities and immigrant communities. Those who are thought not to belong are too often viewed as an enemy to be controlled through show of force.” Shifting the lens to the past 50 years, Patterson contends that “closely related to the disproportionate killing of blacks by police is the rise of mass incarceration in America since the early 1970s and the disparate imprisonment of black Americans, who make up about 40% of the nation’s 2.3 million prisoners” and, disturbingly, “imprisonment has typically increased after periods when African-Americans made significant economic, social and political gains” [6].
The factors that Roberts points out are clearly visible in both Jefferson’s plantation estate and in tragic events such as those surrounding George Floyd. There is a horrifying divide between what the U.S. aspires to be, a nation of equals in which the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are honored, and racism throughout its history and foundation. How to become whole?
“Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the land. Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied” (Matthew 5:5-6, NAB). So runs the promise of the beatitudes. Simply willing goodness into existence is not enough: clearly, action is necessary. Anything less would be to slip back into the passivity Roberts describes, perpetuating a system that has led to many avoidable deaths. Is it possible to carry the spirit proclaimed during the Sermon on the Mount into action which precipitates positive change?
On March 12, 2019, Latasha Walton, a friend of mine, was shot and killed by a police officer during a traffic stop [7]. She was the mother of two children. At her funeral there was an outpouring of emotion from her sons and her extended family. Present outside were police officers. It was a moment to grieve as a community. There were no solutions given during the speeches, no easy answers. It was very human.
The type of grief this causes lasts for a long time. It’s both personal and collective. Perhaps a tool we have in the fight against racism is to recognize the light in each other. Tara Brach writes “a practice that evolves us (and our larger society) toward inclusive loving is to intentionally deepen our relationships with others of difference” [8]. Also, that “the world is divided into those who think they are right” [9].
Being wrong is freeing. “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:32, NAB). Coming into alignment with the truth first requires acceptance that one is wrong. In a heartfelt YouTube video, Van Jones notes the incredible response to George Floyd’s killing as a moment of real change [10]. Now more than ever is an opportunity to see beyond differences, past barriers, to honor the humanness of each other, and to interface with those who are different in order to break down viruses of racism. This is not a matter of appropriateness: it is a matter of life or death.
As a white 39 year old male, I am deeply sorry for the generations of trauma my race has inflicted on others. I hope we are able to steer back from racial injustice, from being divided into being right, and that we are able to celebrate the vast array of journeys that are present in our country, regardless of difference.
[1] Barbarito, G. (2020, June 5) Statement on Equality. Diocese of Palm Beach. Retrieved from https://trustedpartner.azureedge.net/docs/library/DioceseofPalmBeach2017/News/Bishops Statements/Most Reverend Gerald M_ Barbarito Statement on Equality.pdf
[2] Howley, K. (2020, June 3) Deep Biases Prevent Diverse Talent From Advancing. Eos. Retrieved from http://eos.org/articles/deep-biases-prevent-diverse-talent-from-advancing?utm_source=eos&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=EosBuzz060320
[3] D’Urbino, L. (2020, June 11) The power of protest and the legacy of George Floyd. The Economist. Retrieved from https://www.economist.com/leaders/2020/06/11/the-power-of-protest-and-the-legacy-of-george-floyd
[4] Roberts, S. (2020, June 16) What makes a racist? [Video]. YouTube.
[5] Staples, B. (2020, Spring) The Legacy of Monticello’s Black First Family. The University of Chicago Magazine. (Original work published July 4, 2018 in the New York Times).
[6] Patterson, O. (2020, June 6) The Long Reach Of Racism in the U.S. The Wall Street Journal.
[7] Ovalle, D. & Rabin, C. (2019, March 13) Video shows FHP shoot driver during traffic stop in North Miami-Dade. Miami Herald. Retrieved from https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/crime/article227505289.html
[8] Brach, T. (2019, January 6) Shifting From Blame to Love: 3 Practices for a Wise Heart. Tara Brach. https://www.tarabrach.com/blog-shifting-blame-to-love/
[9] Brach, T. (2020, May 6) Sheltering in Love - Part 7: Awakening from the Prison of Blame. Tara Brach. https://www.tarabrach.com/?powerpress_pinw=10636-podcast
[10] Brach, T. (2020, June 18) Van Jones on racial justice [Video]. YouTube.
If the crux of the argument is 'criminalizing calling the police when not actually necessary is wrong' then yeah I agree.
But I personally hate that that is the correct position to take, because seriously fuck that lady.
EDIT: The thing is, though, does this also apply to things like swatting? Because that's exactly what she wanted to have happen to that man.
If you're an abolitionist, then it applies to things like swatting as well.
The way I've seen it presented is that it's a mistake to try to fix the problems of over-policing by creating new crimes and harsher punishments. People using the police to try to murder people should not be convicted of a crime not because they're not doing something horrible, but because doing so will reinforce the power of a system that allows you to call a team of murderers to someone's house.
Ideally intent would matter but the legal system is absolutely garbage at fairly evaluating what constitutes intent.
Ehhh.. POLICE aren't justice. They're supposed to collect the information and let the judiciary do their thing.
EDIT. I mean a hypothetical police that works. Not the tragedy that is US cops
The judiciary in this country has plenty of blood on its hands as well, is the point
throw the book at her is what I'm saying here
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
One of the reasons it's so hard to hold cops accountable is because a lot of prosecutors would rather not press charges against police because they work so closely with the police department and don't want to sabotage that relationship.
True. I mean.. I'd still not be above using the system to try and change the system until I can have a meaningful difference.
Edit: as one course of action among many
Because that's been the right wing play since forever, and it unfortunately works.
But I guess part of that right wing play is closing that way off for anyone else but them after they used it.. Hm
We're not going to terrify people into realizing the criminal justice system is bad by throwing the book at people that call the police to do a racist hit. Historically we know that hitting people with everything the justice system can throw out does more harm than good, and I would also argue that an argument that says, "we need to show people how fucked up the system is by targeting that fucked up system at them," is fucked. The answer to questions like, "why did they arrest the guy that shot up the movie theater and kill the kid walking home from the gas station," can't be, "they should have killed the guy who shot up the movie theater," because it means they're still killing the kid walking home from the gas station.
If you disagree with the idea that she shouldn't be charged, that's fine. The author of the thread is asking you to think about what that means, and examine why you feel that way. If we want to make big structural changes to how the American justice system works, we're going to run into more and more of these questions, however. And there are people, like Josie Duffy Rice, who have been working at answering these questions for much longer than most of us. It's worth listening to them, even if the ideas seem antithetical to what we think justice is.
In a society where criminals and perceived-as criminals are treated a certain way, not treating Amy Cooper that way means that society isn't considering her a criminal. And that would be the worst outcome, certainly, because it would send the message to others that that behaviour is tolerated, accepted even. Is that what you want?
Until the carceral system is abolished, we should treat all people who perform evil deeds as criminals. Because justice is not an ideal, it's a way to deter more evil deeds.
Framing it as 'people we don't like' is pretty bad imo. She's treating this person as someone with bad viewpoints, when what happened was actually an attempted lynching. Which, when all the dismantling is done and whatever accountability remains, is something I would still like to see consequences. Her act of calling the police was a literal, actual hate crime.
I'm in favor of dismantling the criminal justice system, the same way I'm in favor of incredibly strict gun control. Which is, if you try to apply it the same, across the board, at the same time, you're going to end up with a LOT of dead disenfranchised folk.
I think dismantling the criminal justice system is good and needs to happen. I'm strictly against starting that process with Amy Cooper and allowing the general act of privilege of wielding police as a weapon.
update:
And I don't think she means to argue this process needs to start with Amy Cooper, either. Her argument is that if you believe that structural changes need to happen, that includes people like Amy Cooper, and, as I've seen argued by others online, that it includes the cops who killed Breonna Taylor as well. I don't know if I'm comfortable with that, either! It's worth a conversation, though, and it's worth thinking about.
The point abolitionists are making is that the current system as it exists is a way to punish severely many millions of people, and does little if anything at all to deter actual evil.
Trying to incarcerate more people and dole out worse punishments will never work, because the system doesn't function at any level. It will never treat everyone equally because it was designed to make that impossible. It is a one-way ratchet of horribleness, and throwing more people into it won't make it less bad for anyone. It'll just mean more police, more prisons, and more pain.
Please be gay and do crimes. Also stonewall was riot
I mean I think the point (and pooro's post explained this way better than I ever could) is that right now there is no other option and so it's actually a really complicated question.
"What is the goal of incarceration?" Is it punishment? Rehabilitation? Locking a person away from society so they can no longer cause damage to the people in that society? Realistically, it cannot be all 3.
My cousin was locked up for 4 years because he got into a verbal spat with his then-girlfriend, and in the process of trying to get her to stop attacking him, she fell into a table and got injured. My cousin was charged and plead out a deal because his lawyer told him to do so. At his parole hearing, he was asked if he was rehabilitated, and my cousin said his answer was, "Is that why I'm here? Nobody's done a good job of explaining what prison is for." and the parole board had no answer. His parole was granted, but he just views the whole incident as losing 4 years of his life. He learned no lesson, he served no greater good in his incarceration, and there was nothing to protect from him. We're all pretty sure his only crime was being Mexican.
This was absolutely his crime.
Fuck.
FUCK
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But like at what point do you want legal punishment for her just because it feels like something bad should happen to her, does it accomplish anything else
This applies pretty broadly, as well, and it's a difficult subject as crimes get more serious because the truth is that our system doesn't rehabilitate anybody
Most people would say that the goal of the prison system is reform through punishment and would flatly refuse to accept that this is nonsense and doesn't actually work
I'm still sort of working through the feelings I have about this kind of thing
On one hand, I think we should do away with police and prisons, or at bare minimum police and prisons as we currently understand them, and that would mean treating people who try to racistly abuse 911 services with more dignity and compassion than we presently treat criminals
On the other hand, I'm not sure if keeping a wealthy white woman from facing the established consequences of trying to exploit a violent, racist police force to threaten a man's life because he asked her to leash her dog is really my #1 priority when it comes to reforming the justice system
http://www.audioentropy.com/
Because like, what are we accomplishing aside from "doing a bad thing to a person who, admittedly, might deserve something bad happening to them"
And I don't really have an answer, and it feels incredibly hollow
I'm no expert on the subject, but with this crime in particular a good place to start would be reworking/disbanding the police so that she couldn't have pulled her bullshit in the first place
Not to erase her culpability, but her crime was only possible because the police are violent and racist and she knew it
http://www.audioentropy.com/
Yeah, as far as I'm concerned, abolishing and rebuilding the system of policing in this country is a good first step, and that's where I'm directing most of my mental energy right now
What comes after that, reforming prisons and incarceration and rehabilitation, should probably come after people aren't getting gunned down in the streets by the state anymore
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But it also sort of sidesteps the question entirely
Can you do one without the other? My thought is that the "goal" if you want to call it that is to use the threat of imprisonment to deter crime. They seem too fully interlinked (which is part of the problem to begin with I suppose) to really do separately.
Sure, but that's sort of the thing
When a crime happens, we're currently wired to want the criminal to suffer harm that's in some way proportional to the harm they inflicted. That feels good, but realistically it doesn't help much of anything. In my opinion at least, what we should move toward is a system where when a crime is committed, we focus on making the victim as whole as possible and doing what we can to prevent the crime from happening again. Sometimes that might mean isolating someone from normal society for some period of time while we work with them to figure out how to keep them from repeating their crime; other times it might mean recognizing that the law itself was unjust in the first place and needs reworking, and everything else in between.
Hurting a racist criminal through punishment doesn't accomplish either of those goals. The only one it even attempts is the second one, and it doesn't do a very good job of it.
http://www.audioentropy.com/
I think one necessarily leads to the other, absolutely, but I think something as huge as "reforming the entire justice system" in a country like this is gonna have to be done in steps
And to me, the first and most immediate step is without a doubt "abolish/defund the police"
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I don't think that's a fair reading of their tweets at all
Something we've seen a lot of in the past month+ is people saying "abolish the police" in one breath, and "arrest [for example] Breonna Taylor's killers" in the next. There's an undeniable friction there that I think is generally going interrogated. It's asking a broken system to be a remedy for itself. If you want police to arrest Taylor's killers and for them to go to prison, then you have a tricky needle to thread if you honestly want to call yourself a police or prison abolitionist. If those principles are meaningful then they must apply in the worst cases.
Which, like I said before to me it's a matter of priorities. In principle I agree that the people that murdered Breonna Taylor should face a more restorative form of justice; in reality, that alternative justice system isn't gonna sprout up overnight, and in the meantime I think there's better places to focus your energy than saving those shitbags from the violent systems that they voluntarily perpetuated. But, at the same time, that friction still exists and I don't think it's inappropriate to call it out and ask people to contend with it.
http://www.audioentropy.com/
Okay, that does make sense but still. It's like saying "let's abolish money" (for lots of good reasons) but not having a barter system that everyone understands and can use in its place (or WHATEVER system, don't get hung up on that), so people just start starving on day one. We don't HAVE a new system, so even if the goal is 100% to get one, I don't think "let's start not punishing crimes, like say, this hate crime" is worth saying at all.
On the 4th of July there was an attempted lynching near Bloomington, Indiana. Multiple white men, some sporting Confederate flags and shouting "white power" threatened to lynch a black man that had gone out to a local lake with a group of friends to watch the lunar eclipse that night. There's cellphone video of the encounter and it's fairly intense.
Tonight there was a BLM protest in Bloomington and two people were struck by a vehicle, one of them being carried on the hood of the car for two blocks before being violently thrown to the street when the car made a hard turn. She's currently in the hospital with serious injuries. A Twitter thread from a local community radio station (spoilered because it contains a non-graphic picture of the woman on the hood of the vehicle before it speeds away):