President Obama talked with Bill Keller of the Marshall Project on the criminal justice system. He said Thursday “that the Black Lives Matter movement had given voice to the anger and discontent over policing and incarceration that has long been a fact of life in the black community.”
“The African-American community is not just making this up…It’s real and there’s a history behind it,” the president said. “I think the reason that the organizers use the phrase ‘Black Lives Matter’ was not because they were suggesting nobody else’s lives matter. Rather, they were suggesting that there is a specific problem that is happening in the African-American community that is not happening in other communities.”
President Obama discussed the country’s historical struggle with race and current debates over policing within references to his own experiences: “As a young man, there have been times where I was driving and I got stopped and I didn’t know why.”
But the President also urged the public not to blame law enforcement for the country’s high incarceration rate — which disproportionately affects black communities — by explaining that the “problem of racial justice or injustice in society has been a running theme in this country’s history for a very long time.”
He added that, historically, black communities have also dealt with “under-policing,” and “everybody wants strong, effective law enforcement.”
Here’s the full transcript of the panel discussion followed by the video:
THE PRESIDENT: Well, first of all, Bill, thanks for moderating this. Thank you to the Marshall Project. I am particularly grateful to folks in law enforcement, some members of Congress who are here, people in prosecutors’ offices –all of whom have taken a great interest in this.
And as I said backstage before we came out, I do think that we’re in a unique moment in which, on a bipartisan basis, across the political spectrum, people are asking hard questions about our criminal justice system and how can we make it both smart, effective, just, fair.
You’re right, Bill, that reform encompasses a whole bunch of stuff, and not everybody is going to have the same views on every issue. But I do think there are certain principles that my administration -our esteemed Attorney General Loretta Lynch and her deputy and others –are pursuing. And there I do think that there’s some rough agreement.
Number one, I think there’s a recognition that our criminal justice system should treat people fairly regardless of race, wealth, station; that there has to be a consistency in the application of the law. I think that’s an area where people agree.
And so when I came into office, and we saw a huge variance in how crack cocaine was being treated versus powder cocaine, people immediately asked the question, why is that –particularly given that there might be differences in demographics in terms of who uses it, and that would be an example of an area where we had to reform it. And we still haven’t gotten it where it probably needs to be, but we made a change. So, one is fairness.
Number two, proportionality. I think one of the things that has come up again and again in the discussions of reform is, in any criminal justice system we want to make sure that the punishment fits the crime. And if we know, for example, that someone engaged in a non-violent drug crime should be punished but that their sentence should not probably be longer than a rapist or a murderer, and yet that’s not what our sentencing guidelines reflect, then that’s a problem. So, proportionality is the second issue that I’m concerned about.
Number three is a recognition that incarceration is just one tool in how we think about reducing crime and violence and making our communities safe. And if that’s the only tool –if we think we only have a hammer, then everything becomes a nail –then we’re missing opportunities for us to create safer communities through drug diversion and treatment, for example, or through more effective re-entry programs, or getting to high school kids or middle school or elementary school kids earlier so that they don’t get in trouble in the first place, and how are we resourcing that. So that’s a third area.
Connected to that is where are we spending our money? We know we’re spending $80 billion a year incarcerating folks. If, in fact, we had smarter sentencing, we thought about how we’re dealing with drug offenses more intelligently, we are working on evidence-based approaches to rehabilitation and reducing recidivism, and that leads us to save money that then, in turn, we can put on the streets to have a greater police presence, to cultivate better community-police relations, to focus prosecutors’ attention or police officers’ attention on the truly dangerous criminals, then aren’t we better off and isn’t that what we should be pursuing?
So those are the kinds of areas where I think there is actually rough agreement. Now, obviously, the devil is always in the details here, and there are going to be some disagreements on how successful is drug diversion, and can we, in fact, significantly reduce the prison population if we’re only focusing on non-violent offenses where part of the reason that in some countries –in Europe, for example –they have a lower incarceration rate because they also don’t sentence violent offenders for such long periods of time.
Those are all legitimate debates. And I think that part of what our administration is trying to do is look at the data, figure out what we know works, what we don’t.
And the final point I’ll make –and I’ve said this before with respect to criminal justice reform -we can’t put the entire onus of the problem on law enforcement. I think there’s been a healthy debate around police-community relations and some of the episodes that we’ve seen around the country, but we, as a society, if we are not investing in opportunity for poor kids, and then we expect just the police and prosecutors to keep them out of sight and out of mind, that’s a failed strategy. That’s a failure on our part, as a whole.
And so part of what we’ve also been trying to do –and this goes to the prevention issue –is think about where are the communities that are most vulnerable. I was in West Virginia yesterday, talking about the opioid epidemic. Heartbreaking stories that you’d hear from parents about their children first getting OxyContin or Vicodin maybe from a medicine cabinet, and suddenly they are hooked. They move on to heroin. And there was a consensus we need to spend more of our time on treatment and not just on incarceration as a strategy.
And I pointed out to them that part of what makes this an area where maybe those of us who are better off or middle class are more sympathetic is because it seems more like our kids are vulnerable, as well. But, of course, that’s illusory. If kids in the inner city are not getting treatment and opportunity, that’s as much of a problem as if it’s happening to our kids. And we’ve got to think of all our children in that same way.
And I’m encouraged by the fact, in particular, that law enforcement is making this point over and over again –because they have the credibility because of the courage and the hard work and they’re on the frontlines.
So, with that, I should probably make sure that the Chief actually gets a word in. (Applause.)
- KELLER: There’s a lot in there that we –I’d like to pick up on as we go through the allotted time. And I think I’ll start with the question of sentencing, these Draconian sentences that we apply to so many crimes, in part because that’s the subject matter of the legislation that just today passed out of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
A few decades ago, when crime rates were higher and when the only way to get elected to office was tube tougher on crime than your opponent, Congress began restricting the license the judges had in making their sentences. They established mandatory minimum sentences for a number of crimes. They tightened up the safety valve. And that seems to now be recognized as the pendulum having swung too far in one direction. So it’s beginning to swing back a little bit in the other direction.
The bill that passed out of the Senate Judiciary Committee today does some modest reductions in mandatory minimums. And –sorry, having a senior moment on my thought –but prosecutors love mandatory minimums, as a rule. So this is really a question for you, John. Prosecutors love mandatory minimums because they can use them as leverage to drive plea bargains, because they can use them to turn low-level offenders and get them to rat out their bosses. How far can you go in eliminating or reducing mandatory minimums, do you think? Why not just eliminate them altogether?
- WALSH: Well, let me first start out by thanking the President and also the Attorney General for their incredible leadership in this area. Part of the reason we have a moment where all of law enforcement and the entire political spectrum are supporting changes to the sentencing regime is the leadership that you have shown and the people in this room have shown, including Chief Beck.
Mandatory minimums are an important part of how the federal system is set up, but since 2013, when the Smart on Crime policy was announced by then-Attorney General Holder, federal prosecutors have been instructed not to use mandatory minimums except in cases that really merit their attention –in other words, aggravated felons; leaders of drug organizations; violent people. And what’s that’s meant is that our use of mandatory minimums has probably dropped by about 25 percent in that time. But so far, we have not seen a corresponding drop in the willingness of lower-level conspirators to cooperate with us.
In other words, what we’re seeing in the Smart on Crime policy is a direct ability to reduce mandatory sentences while still protecting the public. So the bottom line is –you ask the question, should we eliminate mandatory minimums entirely, and I think the answer to that is no. But we have to reserve their use for the most severe, dangerous and violent offenders who are out there.
- KELLER: Why not eliminate them, though? Why not just have sentencing guidelines the way we have now and have had it in the past, and leave it to the discretion of judges?
- WALSH: Well, I certainly think that –part of what prosecutors do is advocate to judges. That’s our job. We’re used to it and I think we’re confident about the results we can get. Having said that, there’s something to be said for those most aggravated, top-level criminals knowing that they’re going to get hit if they get caught with a very severe penalty. But that’s different than saying we’re going to use mandatory minimums to drive what has turned out to be mass incarceration of relatively low-level offenders in the federal system.
Similarly, I think on the state side –and I would turn this over to Chief Beck –some of the laws that were enacted on the state side in the 1980s and early ‘90s also had very heavy penalties. Whether those are necessary in every instance to accomplish the goals of public safety –that’s a question that we could debate.
But the bottom line is, I think that from a federal prosecutor’s point of view, keeping mandatory minimums for the most serious offenders still makes sense. But using them very sparingly for less serious offenders also makes sense. That’s part of what Smart on Crime is about.
- KELLER: Chief, do you want to pick up on that?
CHIEF BECK: Well, just very briefly, if you view the criminal justice system as a response to a sickness in America, if you view it through the medical aspect, then you have to look at sentencing as a dosage. And I think that we are now experiencing a time in the United States where crime is at a level where we require a different dosage. And we have to recognize that all crimes do not carry the same weight.
And some crimes involve addiction and mental illness and have other pathways that can be more effective than incarceration. And in states across the nation, some of our prisons and jails are schools for criminality. And to put young people –and it’s mainly young people –into those schools for criminality based on minor offenses doesn’t make any sense.
So I think we need to stop wasting money and start investing money. And when I talk about investing money –I’m remiss, I should say that I’m privileged to speak for so many chiefs, so many great chiefs in the audience here –over 50 of them –and we all believe in the same thing, that we need to invest in our future, not continue to use money to lock the future of the United States up. We need to invest in that so that we can move to a place where many of these offenses are looked upon as the illnesses that they are.
- KELLER: Your state has been sort of a laboratory in this regard. You’re now in the fifth year of a court order to reduce prison populations. Last year, California passed Prop. 47, which reduced a lot of felonies to misdemeanors. How has that played out? What lessons are there for the rest of the states in your experience?
CHIEF BECK: So I think there’s some really, really good lessons to be learned. And California often leads the way and sometimes we get things absolutely right and sometimes things need adjustment. And I think it’s important to recognize that what California did in 47 is take several hundred felonies, largely drug-related, and move them to misdemeanors. And a couple of things probably should have been included in that. We also took away progressive prosecutions, so, in other words, you can be arrested and rearrested and re-arrested again for the same crime. And even though it’s a misdemeanor at this point, there’s no enhanced sentencing or enhanced ability to get folks into treatment.
And the other piece is, is there needs to be a stronger lever for the courts to encourage folks to go into treatment. We’re realizing that we’re dealing largely with addicts here and they don’t have self-determination enough to do it, so there needs to be a way to help do that. And then, thirdly, and most importantly, there needs to be adequate programs for people to be diverted into. And it does no good in my estimation to arrest for these offenses over and over and over again with no place for them to go but back onto the street to continue that cycle.
And so one of the things that I would love to see in this discussion is that we all acknowledge the fact that this is not a cost-saving measure. I don’t believe that reducing incarceration should be looked at as a way to save money for the state or for the federal government. I think that should be looked at as a way to develop money to reinvest into the futures of young people, and then that will, in turn, eventually save money. But in the short term, you’ve got to have another pathway.
- KELLER: In your first answer, Mr. President, you touched on the two –what I think of as the two biggest myths about criminal justice reform. One of them Chief Beck has just addressed, which is the idea that in the end, you can save a lot of money by letting people out of prisons without reinvesting that money. The other is that you can significantly reduce the populations of prisons by letting out low-level drug offenders.
It’s true at the federal level, nearly half of the people who are incarcerated are there for drug crimes. But at the state level, where most people are incarcerated, it’s more like 17 percent. Are Americans willing to consider rolling back the sentencing for people who are violent criminals?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, first of all, I think it’s important to look at the evidence –and there’s some conflicting data, but here’s what we know –that we increased our prison population fourfold from1980. And the best social science seems to indicate that, initially, locking up folks who were violent for more certain, longer stretches reduced violence on the streets, but that there was a diminishing return at a certain point and it kind of flattened out. But we just kept on locking folks up without, at that point, it being the main driver of violent crime reductions.
And we have seen incredible, historic reductions in crime over the last 20 years. I know that there’s been some talk in the press about spikes that are happening this year relative to last year, and I’ve asked my team to look very carefully at it –Attorney General Lynch has pulled together a task force –and it does look like there are a handful of cities where we’re seeing higher-than-normal spikes. Across the 93 or 95 top cities, it’s very hard to distinguish anything statistically meaningful.
Now, that doesn’t mean that we don’t take seriously what’s happening in those cities. But the bottom line is, is that I think there’s a strong consensus in the United States of America that you shouldn’t be hit over the head when you’re walking down the street, that you don’t want somebody breaking into your house and threatening your family, that somebody who commits violence, we don’t have a lot of tolerance for.
I would distinguish between those situations and whether or not giving somebody who’s 25 year sold a 40-year sentence versus a 15-year sentences is the smart thing to do, particularly because we know that young people do stupid stuff and as they get older, they get a little less stupid. I speak from experience. (Laughter.) That at least was my experience. And now I’m watching my teenage girls, and they’re a lot smarter than me, but there are still some gaps in judgment. (Laughter.)
So here’s the bottom line. I think it’s smart for us to start the debate around non-violent drug offenders. You are right that that’s not going to suddenly half our incarceration rate, but if we get that –if we do that right, and we are reinvesting in treatment, and we are reinvesting resources in police departments having more guys and gals on the street who are engaging in community policing and that’s improving community relations, then that becomes the foundation upon which the public has confidence in potentially taking a future step and looking at sentencing changes down the road.
So I don’t think there’s anything wrong with us saying, you know what, violent crime we want to keep down. We are going to be a little more hesitant initially in how we think about sentencing on violent crime than we are on non-violent crime. If we can reduce the prison population by 5 percent in an initial stretch -and by the way, that’s not a goal I’m setting, I’m just –that was off the top of my head –but 5 percent, when you’ve got 2 million prisoners, that’s a lot of people and that’s a lot of resources that could be going into other areas.
So I think that this is a staged process. We will lose the public if we try to do everything at once without having data and evidence, and suddenly you see big spikes in crime again and then suddenly we’re back into the politics of lock them up.
If, on the other hand, we do it systematically, methodically, we see what works, we see what doesn’t -the Chief’s point and John’s point about reinvesting I think is absolutely critical. If we do those things well and we can duplicate what happened last year, which was the first time in 40 years that both the prison population and the crime rate went down at the same time –we start seeing the same kinds of patterns as we’re seeing in some of these other states, and the experience we’re seeing in the U.S. Attorney’s Office where we’re not telling prosecutors you’re going to be promoted based on how many maximum sentences you get, but rather based on how wise your use of prosecutorial discretion –if all those things prove that we’re still doing a good job controlling crime, then I think we’ve got something to build on.
- KELLER: One other drug question. John, you work in a state that was one of the first two to legalize recreational use of marijuana. Should Congress take marijuana off the Schedule I list of illegal drugs?
- WALSH: So I’ve learned that I always get a marijuana question. (Laughter.)
- KELLER: Sorry to be so predictable.
- WALSH: I want to reiterate something that I think that the President and the administration has made clear, is that the administration is not in favor of the legalization of marijuana. And the decision to move marijuana from Schedule I to a different schedule is really –there’s a process behind that –it has to do with the medically accepted uses for the drug.
I will make this comment about the situation in Colorado. One of the things that’s been a tremendous, positive development in Colorado is that the state regulatory system has become clearer so that the local law enforcement has a good sense of where its lines are and what enforcement action it can take. And that’s made our ability to partner with local law enforcement in federal enforcement of marijuana very much clearer. So we see an evolving situation where I think, again, as in so many things, the key is federal-state law enforcement cooperative effort to make sure the system works.
- KELLER: I’d like to ask both Chief Beck and John Walsh, are there things that the leader of the free world could be doing on his own without the permission of Congress over the next year and change of his administration that would make this problem better? Less of a problem?
THE PRESIDENT: Let me just amend that question –(laughter) –because I’ve got some outstanding members of Congress here and I want to work with them to get stuff done. (Applause.) I get into enough trouble with Congress without Bill trying to stir things up. (Laughter.)
- KELLER: That’s why I asked the other guys.
CHIEF BECK: First I have to say that I’m amazed by the depths of the President’s understanding of this issue. I mean, the first answer that you gave covered so many of the points that John and I have talked about in private, and it’s obvious that you understand the way that the chiefs in this room and the prosecutors in this room feel about this issue. So that’s a huge start, in my opinion.
But I think that one of the things that we need to look at is remember that this system is made up of three parts, this criminal justice system. It’s a federal level, which we’re talking about directly here, but most folks are affected by state-level prosecutions, state-level incarceration, or even local –even on the local level.
And so when we talk about having treatment available, when we talk about diversionary systems that we can use to get less people in the jail system, it needs to apply to all three. It can’t just be for the use for the federal system. It has to go down to the state system –because many of the states and all the municipalities now struggle economically, and putting money into community-based organizations or to some of the things that the states and the counties run is very difficult. And so if we could get some federal help with systems that are off-ramps for people that are addicted, and off-ramps for people that are arrested for low-level crimes –because the arrests aren’t stopping. I mean, the chiefs in here represent tens and tens of thousands of low-level drug offense arrests, my organization included. But we’ve got to have somewhere for them to go. And it can’t just be 48 hours in the local lockup and then right back on the street corner where they came from. It just can’t be that.
- KELLER: John, have you got any requests of the President?
- WALSH: The one thing that I would really emphasize –so much of law enforcement really depends on local law enforcement, and our partners in police departments and sheriff’s offices all over the country on the federal side we value tremendously. We can’t get our federal work done without the partnership between federal law enforcement and state law enforcement.
One area where over the years we’ve seen a decrease in federal assistance to state and local law enforcement is in the COPS area, the community policing grants. We have fewer officers on the street with federal money than we used to have. And that’s an area that I think would go a long way to enabling the police departments and sheriffs’ offices to engage in that community-oriented policing that really will help prevent crime, so that we’re not confronted with the situation of trying to decide how much of a sentence to give a violent offender because maybe we prevented some young person from going down that road in the first place.
CHIEF BECK: And just not to ignore the opportunity, I have to say that the kinds of programs that I know the President wants, I know the police chiefs out here want, the kind of programs that have maximum community interaction where people know the officer on the street, where officers are not there just to enforce the law but they’re there to build community, those are the most resource-intensive programs that we have.
#ALL LIVES MATTER
http://fusion.net/story/170591/the-next-time-someone-says-all-lives-matter-show-them-these-5-paragraphs/
If they want the implicit “too” they should add it and make it “black lives matter too”
Until then #ALL LIVES MATTER
or better yet, how about:
#ALL LIVES MATTER TOO
But you’re still ignoring the problem. So it doesn’t matter what line you use
Do you disagree that all lives matter? Are you missing that message?
What I disagree about is how stating all lives matter helps us address issues that in the system some lives are treated as more valuable than others? In the Declaration of Independence, it stated “all men are created equal” and yet, we knew that really meant all white males with property, not women, people of color, and the poor. So until we addressed the inequity in the system, the phrase “all men are created equal” was empty rhetoric.
The President appears to suffer from cognitive dissonance on several levels.
The overwhelming violent crime in inner cities, in the black community, is black-on-black crime. Approximately 95% of murders are black-on-black. The President ignores these deaths, and concentrates on a subset of a subset of a subset where there may be a potential issue where place played some role.
The vast majority of Americans don’t agree with the Black Lives George-Soros-funded “movement”. I guess this falls under the umbrella of Obama mentor Frank Marshall Davis.
There has been a parallel increase to this “movement” in violent crime across many urban cities. Sacramento recently reported a 19% increase in violent crime. In Los Angeles, the BLM movement has been aggressive with city leaders (mayor) and even a black pastor says they are losing credibility.
“overwhelming violent crime in inner cities, in the black community, is black-on-black crime. ”
you mean at less than half the rate as it was 20 years ago and a quarter of the rate from the peak.
tbd: http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2014/nov/25/rudy-giuliani/giuliani-93-black-murders-committed-blacks/
October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month.
Barack Palin: #ALL CANCERS MATTER
December 25th is Christmas.
BP: #ALL SAVIORS MATTER
Black Lives Matter
BP: #ALL LIVES MATTER
Today, 10/23, is Mole Day.
#ALL RODENTS MATTER
even…. #All LIBERALS MATTER
Sorry, to be PC it should read
#ALL LIBERALS MATTER ‘TOO’
When I hear “black lives matter” all a think of is rude unruly protesters that cannot have a civil discussion. Also the killing cops theme “pigs in a blanket … .) chanted in one protest march only furthers my opinion that they lack credibility and thus can be disregarded. A year from now they will have burned all the bridges to any group that would have been interested in working with them. They now hold democratic politicians hostage which is quite amusing to watch.
The problem is you’re letting the messengers, who are inexperienced on the public stage, become the message. They don’t know what they’re doing. Most have never done it before. They are not artful in their approach. That doesn’t in the end mean they’re wrong.
The crude delivery of their message undercuts their participation in any discussion on race. Whoops, they do not enter into discussions, they just rudely interrupt others with crude chants. Their behavior makes irrelevant any legitimate issues, if any, that they may have. They just get tuned out. They become part of the problem, not part of the solution.
I think you’re using their crude delivery as an excuse to discount their message.
Their crude delivery eliminates them as a participant in the discussion on the issue. They destroy the validity of their message with their behavior.
David, would you be saying this if the Tea Party were chanting:
“What do we want?
Dead cops.
When do we want it?
Now!”
Would you be giving the Tea Party a pass and saying it’s more about the message and not the messenger? We all know the answer to that.
https://video.search.yahoo.com/video/play;_ylt=A2KIo.DG2SpWox0AcDo0nIlQ;_ylu=X3oDMTByYXI3cnIwBHNlYwNzcgRzbGsDdmlkBHZ0aWQDBGdwb3MDNA–?p=what+do+we+want+dead+cops&vid=90262164aa28ab05de920b9d53cfbfe3&turl=http%3A%2F%2Ftse2.mm.bing.net%2Fth%3Fid%3DWN.NymN6td4zDnlzqJncK4Xkg%26pid%3D15.1%26h%3D300%26w%3D168%26c%3D7%26rs%3D1&rurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3D9gF0PxtgYG0&tit=Anti-white+protesters+chant+%26quot%3BWhat+do+we+want%3F+Dead+cops%21+When+do+we+want+it%3F+Now%21%26quot%3B&c=3&h=300&w=168&l=95&sigr=11b2jt7bf&sigt=12s4lhjki&sigi=12logk2jf&age=1419131540&fr2=p%3As%2Cv%3Av&hsimp=yhs-att_001&hspart=att&tt=b
You’re missing part of the point in my comment – the key point is that I disagree with the core message of the Tea Party, tactics are secondary.
Or how about we stop arguing over the presence or absence of these three little letters “too” and admit that there is still racial component to the disparity of economic wealth, economic opportunity, educational opportunity, health care provision ….within our country and discuss how we can best address this issue that we all know exists.
Tia,
You cannot hold a discussion with this group concerning these issues so why try? They undercut any validity of their issues by their behavior. They actually shut down discussion. Just look at the recent incident with the mayor in LA as an example.
Have black men marry the mother of their children would solve the largest share of problems. But this gets complex as some have tapped into our perverse welfare system by having children, which many believe opens up the floodgates to free or near free housing, food, health care, and cash assistance.
It gets very complex given the various histories in Africa, in the southern US, and where and when a matralineal, matrifocial culture developed. Some think this just developed in America, some think it extends to Africa today where they may be similar patterns. I am no expert on the issue, but know the issues confronting the black community are far more complex than the Left will rarely admit.
Ironically, the black family was as intact, or more intact, than the white family when slavery ended. It may have been Dr. Walter Williams or Dr. Thomas Sowell (or both) who note that the black family could survive slavery, but couldn’t survive the Federal government.
keep black men out of jail and give them jobs and more of them would marry the mothers of their kids.
zaqzaq
“so why try”
Why try what ? Try to discuss the issue with those who prefer to should than to calmly deliberate ? No one is suggesting this as a winning strategy. Why try to deal with the very real issue in people’s lives just because it is not our reality ? Because there is a real issue here.
So why allow extremists on either side of an issue to frame it? Why allow issues that we all know have validity to be defined by those who will not talk but would rather just should. Just because a few extremists shout down those who would attempt to address a situation with a fact and evidence based approach does not mean that the problem does not exist and that people of good will should just throw up their hands and say “never mind” or worse yet adopt an attitude of denial that the problem exists at all as some posters here are prone to do.
zaqzaq
“They destroy the validity of their message with their behavior.”
I completely disagree. The validity of the issue has nothing to do with their behavior. What I interpret your comment as meaning is that you feel justified in ignoring the issue because of their behavior.
Tia,
I feel justified in ignoring them as a participant in finding a solution based on their behavior. They are not bringing solutions to the table only poor behavior. They distract from the issue in their message and how they frame the issue. The underlying issue that needs to be addressed. Their technique prohibits that discussion when they prevent the discussion from happening.
Zaqzaq – Long before the protesters started engaging in public debates, you disagreed on the message and the issue. I feel you’re using their conduct as an excuse to ignore the underlying issues.
zaqzaq
“I feel justified in ignoring them as a participant in finding a solution based on their behavior”
So ignore them. But don’t use their behavior to pretend that the problem does not exist.
If we, as a society, really want to do something positive about the racial problem, then we need to stop talking about catch phrases and slogans and start looking at real solutions. To get started, take a look at some of the following statistics and start working on how to improve things:
* 54% of African Americans graduate from high school, compared to more than three quarters of white and Asian students.
* Nationally, African American male students in grades K-12 were nearly 2½ times as likely to be suspended from school in 2000 as white students.
* In 2007, nearly 6.2 million young people were high school dropouts. Every student who does not complete high school costs our society an estimated $260,000 in lost earnings, taxes, and productivity.
* On average, African American twelfth-grade students read at the same level as white eighth-grade students.
* The twelfth-grade reading scores of African American males were significantly lower than those for men and women across every other racial and ethnic group.
* Only 14% of African American eighth graders score at or above the proficient level. These results reveal that millions of young people cannot understand or evaluate text, provide relevant details, or support inferences about the written documents they read.
* The majority of the 2.3 million people incarcerated in U.S. prisons and jails are people of color, people with mental health issues and drug addiction, people with low levels of educational attainment, and people with a history of unemployment or underemployment.
Part of the problem with citing a string of statistics is that it’s not really an analysis. We have a huge cyclical problem – it’s the poverty-incarceration cycle. You have a group of people more likely to have parents in the legal system – either on probation, incarcerated, with felony status therefore more likely to live in poverty therefore less likely to finish school and more likely to get caught in incarceration themselves. The challenge is really where do you break the cycle? You want to do that in the schools? How do you accomplish that in the climate they live in, with parents in the system and impoverished?
My view is what happens if we intervene to (A) make it more likely that people can escape their past mistakes, (B) give them job training, (C) hopefully allow the next generation to grow up in a more stable household. It doesn’t fix all of the problems now, but right now the system is making it very hard if not impossible to escape this cycle. You get a felony – it greatly reduces your earning power, it makes it hard to get a good job, finish school, even get public assistance. That’s the point being made here.
I’ve seen studies that say that job training is far less effective than a job. I have seen first hand the issue of a lack of parenting, specifically a lack of fathers. I can spot from 20′ away a young man who can follow directions, do a job, without a chip on his shoulder or an attitude, versus those that have all of those issues, and more.
These are issues that businesses don’t have to deal with when they hire illegal immigrants to do work. They’ll work hard, they’ll work 10 hours, they’ll work on Saturday and Sunday with no complaints because they are happy to make $10 or $15 or $20 an hour, whereas the American worker has higher expectations and often behavioral issues (see above).
Recent statistics revealed in California a dramatic rate of truancy within the black community, which dramatically affects all of those statistics, and removes implications of racism or injustice – if the parent can’t even get their child to school. Yes, it is cyclical for a subset of the African American community.
Yes, it certainly is a challenge and it will take many years and a lot of resources to break the cycle of poverty, crime, and low achievement.
My point is that we need to move past arguments about slogans and catch phrases and start looking at real solutions.
i agree we need to move past arguments about slogans. there was a lot of substance to this article, but the entire conversation has devolved to a debate about what black lives matter means and that falls on one poster here.
We could make a major step towards breaking one aspect of this cycle, but it would involve that nasty “R” word, redistribution. As a nation, we have enough wealth to provide a base for everyone who works in any capacity in supporting our society an amount of compensation above the poverty level, but we choose not to structure our economic system in this way since we our so wedded to our mantra that we are “number one” that we blinded to the fact that we are decidedly not “number one ” in everything.
As Don Shor has pointed out, this is not a new or unique point of view. It is not about unicorns or utopia. It is about providing every member of our society with enough resources that they do not have to make the choice between feeding or housing their children and providing medicine, between staying at home and supervising the children or working two full time jobs to survive. Providing everyone with the resources that most of us consider the middle class basics would not only break the poverty cycle, but would provide a huge boost to the economy as these folks exercised their newfound spending power. This is not an impossibility. It is a choice.
We already have redistribution in the form of welfare in many different forms. Monthly checks, food stamps, section 8 housing, racial quotas, college low income grants, Obama phones, etc.
Tia Will, under your utopia would you also offer these same giveaways to illegals? If yes what would stop the flood from the hoards that would be rushing our borders to get your utopian dollars?
I had a guy bend my ear yesterday saying that a single mother could rack up $50-70,000 a year in government benefits without working, and she’d be foolish to give that up to make $10 an hour at McDonalds.
Does Tia want to hand her $100,000 per year as a solution?
Not likely. Maybe half of that, in some states, for a period of time, but not permanently. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2014/12/05/grothman-single-parents-welfare/
The good old “Welfare Queen” myth. I wouldn’t consider “a guy” to be a reliable source. If, however, you include the possibility of, e.g., 10’s of thousands of dollars in medical care through Medicaid and Medicare to treat a catastrophic illness, then that would seem to be a good thing.
BP
“We already have redistribution in the form of welfare in many different forms”
The point that you are missing is that I am not talking about “welfare”. There are no “give aways” in what I am suggesting. I am not talking about giving anyone anything for nothing in return. I am talking about having high expectations of all of our citizens and compensating them adequately for what ever they do. Children and students for being in school since that is what our society expects of them. Nurtures for taking care of those who cannot take care of themselves whether it is children, the ill, the disabled or the elderly. Laborers for the physical work they provide. Those who work in the medical profession whether they are doing the surgery or disinfecting the room between patients. I am discussing a redistribution of compensation for time spent, rather than accrued capital for the supposed “risk” taken, as those many who do physical jobs are not also engaging in “risk” taking.
You like to paint this idea as though it should be discarded because of existing “welfare”. Probably no one disapproves of “welfare” more than I do, but for very different reasons. Nearly every individual who is mentally and physically healthy has something to contribute. We just do not choose to honor those contributions.
“Does Tia want to hand her $100,000 per year as a solution?”
No. Tia would like to hand her a living wage for working at McDonald’s…….or for any other work that she happens to be doing.
It sounds like you may be a Bernie Sanders supporter 🙂
Topcat
“It sounds like you may be a Bernie Sanders supporter
”
Check out my front window !
barack palin: address these comments, i don’t care what you think about blm anymore:
how about his comments on the death penalty – he call aspects of it deeply disturbing. “At a time when we’re spending a lot of time thinking about how to make the system more fair, more just, that we have to include an examination of the death penalty in that…”
Give a black man a good education that prepares him for what his next step in life needs to be, and launch him into a robust economy where are there not only plentiful jobs, but career growth opportunities where he can advance his prosperity into the middle class… and wer would have fewer broken families and fewer blasck men going to jail.
This is what frustrates me… no, pisses me off… about this narrative.
Liberals are anti-capitalists and anti-industrialists.
Handouts don’t work. They not only don’t lift up a person, but they break him down.
And even Tia’s weird utopian idea to pay everyone the same for their hours of work. It is demeaning to people to artificially boost their position even as they take the free stuff.
Humans want to stuggle and persevere. There are no shortcuts that don’t screw up human sense of worth and feelings that self-actualization has not been achieved.
This new liberal-Democrat narrative that incarceration is the cause of black social and economic under-representation is absolutley wrong. I think it is a political strategy to deflect from the truth. These things are symptoms of social view and government policies that are preventing blacks from moving forward.
You can have your extreme socialist society and pursue extreme environmental policy at the expense of blacks. You can favor unionized teacher jobs over the welfare of students for political reasons. These are the things we are doing that indicate “Black lives do not matter.”
Frankly: “This new liberal-Democrat narrative that incarceration is the cause of black social and economic under-representation is absolutely wrong.” I don’t think you have this right. The point is not that it is a “cause” but rather that it is an important part of the cycle. And how could it not be when you’re talking about one in four being under some form of correction currently and when you have just specific impacts – lack of jobs, lack of ability to finish school, etc. Pick your intervention point. You are picking education – which is fine. But you need to understand your trying to intervene in education in a place where families are split, there is substance abuse among the parents, incarceration among the fathers, and other pressures. It’s not nearly as clean as you’d like it to be at that point.
There isn’t any one simple and easy way to solve the problems of black youth. We, as a society, should be doing many things differently if we care about improving the situation. Education is one part of the problem but it isn’t the only thing we should be doing. We also need to be looking at the breakdown of the black family, the glorification of violence and gang culture, and the prevalence of substance abuse.
I agree. But again, I think the breakdown of the black family is at least in part attributable to mass incarceration.
I would say that mass incarceration is at least in part attributable to the breakdown of the black family.
The challenge is: What do we, as a society, do to improve the situation?
You may be on to something… more of a ‘root’/’core’ issue than “mass incarceration”… we hear statistics of incarceration by race… “obviously” a result of overt/covert “racism”… it would be interesting to see what happens if a different ‘filter’ is used, across all race lines… incarceration of those coming from ‘broken’/’dysfunctional’ families… I’m just guessing here, but I suspect that correlation is significantly higher than using the racial filter.
Frankly: Give a black man a good education that prepares him for what his next step in life
If he can get through this:
I don’t condone what the officer did to her but by the same token maybe due to recent trumped up racial charges against authority she felt empowered not to listen and obey the cop.
Honestly, is that what you would be thinking if that had somehow been your daughter in the hands of that officer in that setting?