This year has at times felt like one body blow after another in the ongoing battle to protect civil rights and expand racial equality. The Supreme Court cut a huge hole out of the Voting Rights Act, and the decades-long process of rolling back gains in affirmative action and school desegregation continues apace. And then there was all the issues swirling around the George Zimmerman verdict. It has become clear that there is a sustained, coordinated assault against the gains the civil rights movement made half a century ago. This is all the more troubling when we come to grips with the extent to which the movement fell short of its goals in the first place. We like to think the civil rights movement swept everything before it. It's true that it achieved significant parts of its agenda. But it was also defeated.
And the conservative forces that defeated it have not gone away. They retrenched and are now resurgent in many states, in the U.S. House, and in the Supreme Court. They are all the more powerful for having appropriated the movement's legacy and successfully delegitimized discussion of the plain truth: the United States is shot through with racism in its public policy and in its political culture, a fact that is obvious to all those able to imagine a society without racial privilege. But the progress we have made is incorporated into the remaining racist redoubts of law and tradition and thereby becomes a means of resisting more progress.
The racism is particularly pronounced in conservatism, whose most popular spokespersons defend White supremacy unfailingly. It manifests itself in newly created fictions about voter fraud and the resulting wave of vote suppression laws. But as a cursory look at any Democratically controlled big city will reveal, racial oppression is a bipartisan White American tradition.
I didn't mean to rant because this is all a prelude to two pieces of spectacular news this morning. First, Attorney General Eric Holder is set to announce a move to get around Federal minimum sentencing laws for drug crimes. You can see the details here, but the point is that the Obama administration is trying to reduce the Federal prison population by sidestepping the minimum sentencing laws for nonviolent drug offenders. Part of the reason for doing this is the racist impact of these laws. Why not go through congress and actually change the law? First, because the House doesn't pass anything. Second, because the House especially doesn't pass anything that advances racial justice.
The second and perhaps even more important development is that a federal judge this morning gave a giant slap down to the city of New York and Mayor Bloomberg's racist stop-and-frisk policies. It was about as unequivocal a ruling as we could have hoped for. The judge said the city deliberately violated the civil rights of tens of thousands of New Yorkers over the years and ran roughshod over the fourth and fourteenth amendments.
This is a good reminder of how racism in the American political system is very much a bipartisan affair. Liberals and Democrats give themselves way too much credit. Americans have a tendency to deplore symbolic racism while not worrying about racist acts that actually ruin people's lives. Rush Limbaugh, for example, is a disrespectable figure who is widely maligned and ridiculed. It is right that he should be so, but think about this: Mayor Bloomberg has done much more to actually inflict acts of racism on real people in their daily lives than Rush Limbaugh ever has. Yet because he is rich and powerful and does not say outrageous things, Bloomberg is considered respectable.
If you think Bloomberg ought to be a respectable figure, try to imagine an America in which its premier city was led by a Black mayor who systematically and deliberately (and often violently) stopped hundreds of thousands of its White residents each year without any suspicion beyond their color. Would that mayor be respectable? For skeptics thinking this scenario leaves out the important variable of crime rates, it is crucial to know that the judge found that New York City disproportionally targeted racial minorities even after controlling for all other variables.
Showing posts with label drugs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label drugs. Show all posts
Monday, August 12, 2013
Wednesday, June 5, 2013
Racism is a Normal Feature of American Life. Right Now. In 2013.
The ACLU came out with a study on Monday showing the huge nationwide racial disparity in marijuana arrests. It was duly reported on in the media yesterday and will quickly be forgotten. I'm not going to rehash the contents of the study, so if you're unfamiliar with these disparities check out the report or Wonkblog's helpful summary. The key point to keep in mind is that there are not significant differences in marijuana use across racial groups.
The depressing predictability and regularity of these studies raise a few larger points.
1) We live in a society that is basically unfair in ways that completely contradict everything we claim to stand for. These are not problems as defined by radical liberals. These are basic moral and constitutional violations that ought to unite people across the political spectrum in outrage. Because black people bear the brunt of it, indifference is the more common reaction.
2) As Michelle Alexander has shown in The New Jim Crow, the Supreme Court has effectively institutionalized racial discrimination in law. Racial profiling is legal, and many police forces are racist in their practices (in the sense that they apply the law and their policing power in disparate ways based on race rather than solely on concrete factors like crime rates).
3) The purveyors of these racist practices are bipartisan, and not necessarily white. From reactionary bigots like Sherriff Joe Arpaio, to big city Democratic mayors like Rahm Emmanuel, racist policing is either actively encouraged, or silently accepted. The prime example is New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, whose paternalistic liberalism finds no fault with invading the privacy of citizens in systematically racist ways.
4) Yet our political culture does not allow these facts to be plainly stated. At the national level, both parties pretend that America is a place where everybody gets a fair shot. On the Republican side, any politician who dares to admit that minorities are discriminated against because of their race immediately dooms their chances for higher office. And really, it's not that much different for Democrats. Barack Obama has spent more time telling black Americans to turn off the TV and pull their pants up than he has acknowledging the systemic discrimination they face. There is grassroots activism in the Democratic Party on the left, but if you want to be a big-time national politician you don't make a big deal out of it. You might vaguely allude to ongoing problems, but you certainly don't call out America's racism or propose any specific means of dealing with it.
5) At the state level, the trend is clearly toward less punitive drug laws. This is positive in that as it reduces the overall severity of punishment those who have been the target will feel some relief. But it doesn't directly address the core problem of racial discrimination. Without proactive action, a less punitive drug war will reduce the absolute number arrests, but will do nothing about the underlying disparity. Unfortunately, there is little evidence the trend toward leniency is driven by an acknowledgment of racism. It rather seems to be fueled by the growing acceptance of marijuana among middle class whites.
6) I'm not sure history will look kindly on Barack Obama's cowardice on racism. I am sure he is aware of the issues involved. But he has done nothing to bring these matters to the nation's attention. I know what the political scientists tell us, that by mentioning the issue he immediately polarizes it. But we're talking about something the right-wing could hardly be more retrograde and polarized on already. What's the harm in mentioning it?
The depressing predictability and regularity of these studies raise a few larger points.
1) We live in a society that is basically unfair in ways that completely contradict everything we claim to stand for. These are not problems as defined by radical liberals. These are basic moral and constitutional violations that ought to unite people across the political spectrum in outrage. Because black people bear the brunt of it, indifference is the more common reaction.
2) As Michelle Alexander has shown in The New Jim Crow, the Supreme Court has effectively institutionalized racial discrimination in law. Racial profiling is legal, and many police forces are racist in their practices (in the sense that they apply the law and their policing power in disparate ways based on race rather than solely on concrete factors like crime rates).
3) The purveyors of these racist practices are bipartisan, and not necessarily white. From reactionary bigots like Sherriff Joe Arpaio, to big city Democratic mayors like Rahm Emmanuel, racist policing is either actively encouraged, or silently accepted. The prime example is New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, whose paternalistic liberalism finds no fault with invading the privacy of citizens in systematically racist ways.
4) Yet our political culture does not allow these facts to be plainly stated. At the national level, both parties pretend that America is a place where everybody gets a fair shot. On the Republican side, any politician who dares to admit that minorities are discriminated against because of their race immediately dooms their chances for higher office. And really, it's not that much different for Democrats. Barack Obama has spent more time telling black Americans to turn off the TV and pull their pants up than he has acknowledging the systemic discrimination they face. There is grassroots activism in the Democratic Party on the left, but if you want to be a big-time national politician you don't make a big deal out of it. You might vaguely allude to ongoing problems, but you certainly don't call out America's racism or propose any specific means of dealing with it.
5) At the state level, the trend is clearly toward less punitive drug laws. This is positive in that as it reduces the overall severity of punishment those who have been the target will feel some relief. But it doesn't directly address the core problem of racial discrimination. Without proactive action, a less punitive drug war will reduce the absolute number arrests, but will do nothing about the underlying disparity. Unfortunately, there is little evidence the trend toward leniency is driven by an acknowledgment of racism. It rather seems to be fueled by the growing acceptance of marijuana among middle class whites.
6) I'm not sure history will look kindly on Barack Obama's cowardice on racism. I am sure he is aware of the issues involved. But he has done nothing to bring these matters to the nation's attention. I know what the political scientists tell us, that by mentioning the issue he immediately polarizes it. But we're talking about something the right-wing could hardly be more retrograde and polarized on already. What's the harm in mentioning it?
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