July 20, 2020

The quest for racial justice

The killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police has galvanized the Back Lives Matter movement and captured public opinion.  This is not because that was an unprecedented event; the cases of  Tamir Rice, Walter Scott, Elijah McClain, Freddie Gray and others made that clear.  Eric Garner, like Floyd. died from a police choke-hold, pleading “I can’t breathe.” 

There are several interrelated causes of the violence.  The first, clearly, is racial bias among police officers. The reality of that bias is demonstrated by the disproportionate number of African Americans who are the victims of the police.¹  Bias simply must be rooted out, and police unions must not overlook it in defending officers.  Federal oversight and monitoring of police departments should be expanded, another reason — if any were needed — to vote Trump out of office.

Another factor is the too-quick use of deadly force, often including frantic multiple rounds;  Breonna Taylor was a victim of that behavior.  This is in part the result of the militarization of police forces, including weapons and other equipment, tactics and attitudes.   American police kill far more civilians than those in other countries.² A swat team seems to be the default response to almost anything.  Using no-knock warrants, as in the Taylor case, adds another layer of irresponsibility.

Killings and other acts of violence by police often are not punished because of forgiving legal standards and policies regarding the use of deadly force.  This issue needs systematic review.³

Another reason for overreaction is gun policy.  Our idiotic laws and public attitudes have left the country awash in firearms, which must make policemen fearful.  That is no excuse for racist, over-violent actions, and it has nothing to do with cases such as George Floyd’s, but it does contribute to the wider problem. 

It is not only police who are armed and dangerous, especially to minorities.  The cases of Trayvon Martin and Ahmaud Arbery involved self-appointed vigilantes, free to roam about, armed, looking for “criminals,” i.e., African-American males. 

An article in the July 2 issue of The New York Review of Books discusses another shocking manifestation of racial bias and brutality, the torture of prisoners in Chicago police precincts.  “[B]etween 1972 and 1991 at least 125 black Chicagoans were tortured by police officers” in one precinct, probably repeated to some degree elsewhere in the city.⁴   

The protests have been peaceful for the most part, but there have been excesses, including vandalism and looting during the early rallies and the occupation of a few blocks in Seattle.  I was afraid that Trump would seize upon such matters, rally his base behind a law-and-order pitch, and turn the public against BLM.  However, his use of U.S. Park Police and National Guard troops to clear Lafayette Square for an inane photo-op was widely condemned, and his rhetorical attacks didn’t resonate, partly because public and media support for the protests was stronger than might have been expected, and also due to Trump’s obvious nods toward white supremacy.  His racism never has been a secret, so his tweeting of whites brandishing guns and yelling “white power” was just Trump blundering along his usual path.

There still is a risk of backlash as matters are out of control in places.  In Seattle on Sunday, demonstrators damaged the East Police Precinct building, adjacent to the formerly occupied area, damaged another precinct building, and engaged in some looting and general vandalism.  Public support has been both proper and strong, but this sort of behavior could destroy it.  The invasion of federal forces in Portland and the threat of similar deployments is Trump’s somewhat belated play of the law-enforcement card. However, it is so crude and excessive that it may be self-defeating. 

As a result of the protests there has been some movement by police departments to ban neck holds and to require an officer to intervene if another is using excessive force.  The US House has passed a bill which would, among other features,

Ban no-knock warrants in drug cases at the federal level. Condition law enforcement funding for state and local law enforcement agencies on prohibiting the use of no-knock warrants in drug cases. . . . Ban the use of chokeholds and carotid holds. Condition law enforcement funding for state and local law enforcement agencies on establishing a law to prohibit the use of chokeholds and carotid holds.⁵

It would create a national registry to track officers with a record of misconduct who move to other police forces.

The protests also have forced a long-overdue examination of Confederate symbols and attitudes.  The hypocritical defense of the Confederate flag — it’s a symbol of a proud regional heritage — should have collapsed, if not long before, with the image of Dylann Roof posing with a gun and the flag before he murdered nine people at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston in 2015.⁶  Again Trump has come down on the wrong side of the debate, opposing removal of Confederate statues and symbols and the renaming of military bases.

The death of John Lewis reminds us of another issue of racial justice: voting rights.  In 2013, in Shelby County v. Holder, the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act claiming, through the Chief Justice, that its factual assumptions were out of date, although reviewed by Congress in 2006.  The decision resulted in a flood new restrictions on voting rights, affecting minorities disproportionally.  A bill updating the Act passed the House in December 2019, but has been ignored by the Senate. A Democratic Senate and President would guarantee its passage.  Whether the Supreme Court would uphold it is another matter; the Shelby decision also rested on a theory of states’ rights, spurious but attractive to reactionaries.

_____________________

1. I collected some statistics demonstrating bias in my post of July 11, 2019. Here’s another source:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/investigations/police-shootings-database/

2.https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2020/06/05/policekillings/

3. An article describing the situation is here:

 https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/08/how-courts-judge-police-use-force/594832/

4. Peter C. Baker, “A legacy of Torture in Chicago,” NYRB p. 43

5. Quotes are from a summary by sponsors:

https://judiciary.house.gov/uploadedfilesjustice_in_policing_act_of_2020_section_by_section.pdf?utm_ campaign=2926-519

6. There was a brief push to remove Confederate flags following that murder.  See my note of July 5, 2015, which also describes the hypocrisy in the pro-flag argument.

---