The keynote speaker for the Davis MLK Day celebration was ACLU Northern California Policy Director Natasha Minsker. This year’s event focused on Black Lives Matter and criminal justice system reform. She said that “today we recommit our community to the goals of racial justice and ending racial oppression.”
In order “to achieve that goal,” she said, “we must radically reform our criminal justice system.” Ms. Minsker noted that in the last few years, the Black Lives Matter movement “has brought to the national consciousness the reality of violence endured by people of color at the hands of law enforcement every day in this country.”
Because of this activism, she said that the community can bring to light the names and faces of African Americans, unjustly killed by law enforcement in the last few years – Eric Gardner, Tamir Rice, Sandra Bland and so many more.
“This being Davis, I bet most of you can bring to mind the numbers that show the compelling need for change to our criminal justice system,” she said, citing stats like one in four African American men will go to jail or prison. A young African American man is more likely to go to prison than to graduate from college.
The U.S., she said, has five percent of the world’s population but 20 percent of the world’s prisoners.
“I think probably all of you know, we have a problem and we have to fix it,” Ms. Minsker stated. “Knowing the names and numbers is a good start, but it’s not enough to know why we have a problem and what we have to do to fix it.”
In order to do that, she said, we have to understand where we come from, “how the law has been used as a tool of racial oppression in this country from the very beginning.” She traces it to the 1600s “when criminal law was used to enforce the status of being a slave.” The law was used to categorize race and classify African Americans and Africans as second-class citizens and “even subhuman.”
She noted that “some of the activity was only a crime if you were black and all of the punishments were worse if you were black – this was explicit in the law.” For instance, it was lawful to kill a black person who was resisting arrest or who resisted the authority of their white slave owner.
“Think about that one of the first laws in our country gave the police the power to kill black people for resisting white oppression,” she said. “The end of slavery did not end the narrative that African Americans and indeed all people of color are second class citizens. It didn’t even end the legal structures that enforced segregation and the second class status of African Americans.”
The end of slavery brought the Jim Crow era that made African Americans second class citizens.
It was important to understand, Natasha Minsker explained, that “these were criminal laws. It was a crime to use the wrong bathroom.”
She noted that today, when we engage in civil disobedience today, we march through the streets, we refuse to move, and the police may arrest us for the failure to disperse because we are blocking the street.
“That’s not what was happening in the civil rights movement,” she explained. “Rosa Parks was arrested for being a black person sitting in a place reserved for white people. Our criminal laws made it a crime to be black in places of white privilege.”
Ms. Minsker noted that not only did we see the use of Jim Crow laws to enforce segregation, but “we also saw the increasing use of proxies, particularly poverty, as a proxy for race.”
For instance, there is a poll tax that requires a payment in order to be able to vote. It is not explicitly based on race, “but it functions to exclude primarily African Americans.” The jury system by the 1920s didn’t specifically exclude blacks, Ms. Minsker explained, but rather the mechanisms put in place made it impossible for a black to even imagine serving on a jury.
Under the civil rights movement, “the explicit race-based divisions in our law go away, some of the proxies go away.” “The signs that say whites only go down, and the poll tax is abolished,” Natasha Minsker explained. This change however, “has very little impact on the criminal justice system.”
In the 1970s we see “a tough on crime mentality take hold of the American people and politics.” She explained, “Many people don’t see it as coincidence that the tough on crime mentality took hold just as the legal basis of segregation would be dismantled.”
In the 1970s and 80s we see an incredible expansion of our criminal justice system. “Things that were not crimes before, become criminal,” Ms. Minsker stated. For a time, it was illegal to sell drugs “but it wasn’t a crime to possess a certain amount of drugs, and it wasn’t a crime to use those drugs, and then it became a felony.”
More behavior became defined as criminal with longer sentences for all kinds of crimes. The rights of people accused of crimes were taken away. “We see an incredible ballooning of the sheer number of people impacted by the criminal justice system,” she explained. “Because the racial bias has been baked in from the beginning, when we increase the number, we just exponentially expand those disparities.
“Today we have a system where the criminal justice system operates as a massive instrument of control for people of color, particularly for African Americans and Latinos,” Natasha Minsker said. She repeated, one in four African Americans is either in custody or under the control of supervision. “It operates as a system of control for the heavy police presence in communities of color, police presence that is not there to investigate crimes against people of color as the crimes to which African Americans are victims continue to be the least likely to be solved.”
She continued, “There is a heavy police presence there to police or control.”
Once in the criminal justice system, people often remain under that control.
“If you are convicted of a felony in this system, it is nearly impossible to get a job and if you don’t have a job, it’s impossible to have a place to live,” she explained.
Natasha Minsker explained, “We have dismantled the explicit race-based laws. Those aren’t there.” She argued that the disproportionate impact “works through implicit bias.” She argued, “Three hundred years of legal oppression has created in all of us implicit bias. As a result of all of that legal system and real oppression, we now are burdened by an unconscious association between crime and race.
“It doesn’t make us bad people. It just makes us people,” she explained. “But we have to address it.”
Implicit bias operates in police, in whom they choose to arrest. It operates in prosecutors in whom they choose to charge and the type of charges they bring. It operates in defense attorneys in whether they believe their clients and how hard they fight for their rights. It operates in judges in deciding who goes home and who stays in custody and what sentences will be imposed.
She argued, “That implicit bias also continues because poverty continues to be a proxy for race.” She noted, African Americans “continue to have the least financial resources in this country and are the most likely to live in deep poverty. Our entire economic system continues to be based on deep inequality.
“It begins with bail,” she said. “If a person is arrested, then they can post money bail and then get out.” A wealthy white person can bail out of jail if arrested. They will go home, keep their job, they will remain with their family, hire an attorney and “get a better outcome.”
Someone who is in jail and can’t afford bail will stay in jail “and that person loses their job, loses their home, sometimes loses their family and they are under enormous pressure to take a deal and get out as soon as they can and try to restore what they can in their lives.”
She explained, “The entire criminal justice system is based on economic inequality from the very start.”
She said the scale of this problem is huge, enormous and overwhelming. “To achieve racial justice in this country we must fundamentally transform our criminal justice system.”
Natasha Minsker said it is not enough to talk about criminal justice system reform as a reduction of numbers. She said in order to address the core problems “then we have to talk about implicit bias. We have to talk about economic justice. We have to address the daily indignities that people of color continue to endure at the hands of the police.
“We have to address the structures that tip the scales of justice away from the poor,” she said.
While it sounds overwhelming, Natasha Minsker said “it’s really not because we know what to do. And knowing what to do is half the battle.
“We know what to do, all we need is the will to do it,” she said. “More and more in this country people are demonstrating that we do have the will.”
Last year, for example, in California, we passed the Racial and Identity Profiling Act. “This was a ten-year effort,” she said. “California now has the strongest law in the country addressing racial profiling by police.”
She explained everyone expected the governor would veto the bill but, instead of waiting for the governor to make up his mind, people took action, marching on the Capitol. They held a sit-in. They held a vigil for days.
“On the day they were going to start a hunger strike, he signed the bill,” she said. “If people act, we move mountains. So today we commit ourselves to take action to achieve racial justice in this country. We know what to do. We have the will to do it. And through collective action, we will achieve the dream of racial justice in this country.”
The rest of the program:
—David M. Greenwald reporting
“To achieve racial justice in this country we must fundamentally transform our criminal justice system.”
“We know what to do, all we need is the will to do it,” she said. “More and more in this country people are demonstrating that we do have the will.”
“If people act, we move mountains. ”
Amen.
A party of people that get their power, money and personal validation if things stay the same or worse.
Frankly, you are being a troll.
of course he is, but the irony is that the comment cuts the opposite way than he intended. the problem right now is that the system is discriminatory and making it impossible for people to escape once they get caught up in. the solution is to change the system. the people benefiting the current system are pushing back against reform and frankly is one of them.
So what’s the reform you have in mind besides law enforcement?
sentencing reform, restructuring the bail system, moving away from a punitive drug system, moving towards a more restorative approach to justice, as i said yesterday, body cameras for police, special prosecutors for officer involved shootings, better training for police and really everyone on implicit bias. that’s just off the top of my head.
How do I benefit? I want the black community fully integrated.
That’s why I asked DP? Maybe you benefit because when you ‘never’ commit a crime you ‘never’ go to jail?
“Maybe you benefit because when you ‘never’ commit a crime you ‘never’ go to jail?”
the system works well for wealthy white males, it doesn’t work for poor black and hispanics. so the key question is how do you allow the huge percentages of those populations to escape from the grasp of the new jim crow.
bp, i gave you a long list of reforms in response to your question and you didn’t respond.
Don’t commit the crime and you won’t have to go to jail.
I didn’t respond because I said besides “law enforcement”, I consider most of your responses to fall under that.
I thought you meant law enforcement (police) as opposed to the judicial system (courts, laws, etc.).
of course not committing a crime avoids a lot of problems, but for a huge population, it’s too late for that, so what do we do with millions of people, just give up?
“Sentencing reform, restructuring the bail system, moving away from a punitive drug system, moving towards a more restorative approach to justice, as i said yesterday, body cameras for police, special prosecutors for officer involved shootings, better training for police and really everyone on implicit bias. that’s just off the top of my head.”
Hear, hear.
No trolling. That is a valid counterpoint. The people pushing the racism narrative are often served by it.
what i see is a group of young activists concerned about a specific problem. they have created energy and space for politicians who were probably concerned about the system itself to move and start looking at potential changes.
Frankly
“A party of people that get their power, money and personal validation if things stay the same or worse”
This is indeed ironic since it is you who does not want real change except in terms of economic growth. Growth, diversification, or change in any other area of our social structure you see as a threat and speak out against these types of changes frequently.
What I would suggest as a change that could truly create,over time, equality of opportunity would be acceptance of a UBI, free education through college, payed job training – doing away with non paid internships, a universal two years of service to the country in either the military or an equally valued homeland service such as “Teach for America” which my daughter is engaged in now. I believe that if we chose to reward the behaviors that we want to see, we would see a marked reduction in poverty which I believe is the basis for much of the “undeserving” classification that you bestow so freely on those whose life circumstances you know nothing.
I really don’t know what you are talking about here.
Higher incidence of black arrests and black prisoners are a consequence of the breakdown in human/social human capital in the black community. The breakdown in human/social capital in the black community is directly the result of the loss of conservative governing principles (traditional American principles) being replaced with secular liberal governing principles (neo-liberal principles of old Europe).
You see, secular liberal principles work well for the new middle class elite liberals, but they are terrible for the middle class and poor. Secular liberal principles destroy human/social capital in poor and working-class communities, while they do fine in exclusive economically-gated communities like Davis.
Your daughter’s “Teach for America” gig is a pursuit for elites, not for disconnected working-class and poor people.
“,,,secular liberal principles”
liberal
1. Possessing and manifesting a free and generous heart. 2. Appropriate and or fitting for a broad and enlightened mind 3. Free from narrowness, bigotry or bondage to authority or creed
Frankly
“Your daughter’s “Teach for America” gig is a pursuit for elites, not for disconnected working-class and poor people.”
Only if you consider everyone who has managed to get themselves through a college education “elite”. Was participation in the Public Health Service which I put in “only for the elite” after I had exhausted my educational funds which I had saved working ever since I was 12 and living with my mother and sister off social security and babysitting money and what we could earn selling fruit from our own yard to a local store. I guess you are considering that once I had my BA, I was instantaneously “elite”.
While it is true that some of my daughter’s cohort are from “elite” backgrounds such as having a doctor parent. It is equally true that others are not coming from poor and or working class backgrounds just as I did.
My suggestion is that if we were to provide free through college education and/or job training for everyone, then anyone who chose to take advantage of the opportunity would now be a member of this “elite” educated group and as such could be expected to give back two years to the community either in the military or in some other service area prior to going on to develop their own career in their field of choice.
I honestly do not see what you would have against required years of service to our country for all.
You can already get a free education by giving a few years to the military. My son got his medical degree and paid it back by delivering Army/Air Force babies for four years in Germany. He had a great experience. The same opportunities are out there for everyone if they’re willing to do the work and put in the time.
not everyone wants to join the military and the military is not the only way to provide service to our country.
“I really don’t know what you are talking about here.”
Yet you expound on it, ad nauseam.
” conservative governing principles (traditional American principles)”
Two different things. I’ve never lived in your “fantasy ” two dimensional America. Mine is a pluralistic, inclusive and dynamic society.
“Your daughter’s “Teach for America” gig is a pursuit for elites, not for disconnected working-class and poor people.”
Contemptuously condescending, even for you.
I don’t even know what he means by “secular liberal governing principles (neo-liberal principles of old Europe).” That’s a complete mish-mash of words. I wonder what he’s really trying to say.
Conservative does not equal American. It’s just one kind of American.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secular_liberalism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoliberalism
Frankly: Your daughter’s “Teach for America” gig is a pursuit for elites, not for disconnected working-class and poor people.
Your disparaging comment here is interesting, trollish, and ironic in light of your usual ignorant narrative about “crappy public education”.
The usual pro TFA narrative is that young graduates are fulfilling a mission to help save under-privileged students from an uncertain future in education. Public school districts in larger lower income communities have used TFA as a way to avoid costs of paying full salaries for long term teachers. This lack of permanent teaching staff has kept such schools from improving in the long term. TFA benefits because they receive a commission for each TFAer placed in a district.
There’s a satirical piece from the Onion about this:
and
Frankly, Please be brutally honest with your readers and explain to us, once and for all, what has occurred to you, personally, in your life, that has caused the word “racism” to strike such a nerve with you. Did you ever lose a job opportunity, or were you ever denied entrance to a college, because of your white skin? What happened to you, personally, to get you so emotional on this topic? I am sincerely trying to figure out your feelings (yes! feelings!) on this subject.
Thank you, Frankly. I am frankly perplexed….
Sisterhood, Have been busy so just now had time to respond.
First, I am not “emotional” as you put it. I am just tired of the same old narrative that never solves the problem.
Frankly (because I am) I am really a bit uncomfortable answering your question about what has occurred to me out of concern of that soft blanket of victimhood falling over me. Suffice to say that I would not want any child or young adult to face the challenges I faced growing up.
But I did and I persevered.
Everyone should be able to do the same.
What does not kill us should make us stronger.
We only get about 4 twenties… how are you going to spend them? Wallowing in despair that life isn’t fair?
No I am not black, but I bristle at the constant dismissal of other views because one is not black. I assume you are not black… you are certainly not a male based on your moniker. So why do you get the higher righteous ground claiming to “know”?
I don’t think you do any more than I. And I think the “male” part puts me in a much better position to understand what is going on in the black community because the problems are mostly male-caused (maybe except for black female promiscuity… which I am betting that you mostly blame on males.)
Every challenge I faced and will face, there are millions that have and will face significantly deeper and wider challenges.
So how could I be comfortable being a victim when there are so many others worse off? How can anyone?
That black fatherless boy in Chicago… at least he isn’t the same in Ethiopia or Haiti. How much worse can it be? It is almost endless, right?
Being black in this country is a tired old and invalid excuse for victimhood after so many racial advances.
We have a black president elected by a majority.
In 1960 4% of Americans approved of black-white marriage. Toady it is 87%. Today 12% of married blacks are in mixed-black-white race marriages.
Blacks are not prevented from siting in the front of the bus, nor are they prevented from doing anything that a white person can do.
As liberal Harvard sociologist Orlando Patterson said, “America, is now the least racist white majority society in the world; has a better record of legal protections of minorities than any other society, white or black; offers more opportunities to a greater number of black persons than any other society, including all of those of Africa.” Patterson, by the way, is black.
It is true.
We no longer have a black racial discrimination problem in this country any more than we have a general problem with tribalism and groupism… we don’t because it is and always will exist… it is human nature.
We have implemented civil rights 1.0 and 2.0. But liberal social justice crusaders just cannot let go. They cannot let go and so civil rights 3.0 cannot happen. Civil rights 3.0 is social and economic parity.
Making the cops the scapegoat and making them stand down in the high crime black neighborhoods is the most idiotic idea I have heard come out of the left related to the plight of blacks. It will not help a bit for the black community to reach social and economic parity. It will do the opposite. I think you know this. I think David and DP know this. But ya’ll are addicted to narrative… and the political capital you hope to raise.
Frankly, we’re all racists if we don’t boycott the Oscars.
My poor wife will be a racist then because she will watch it.
“maybe except for black female promiscuity… which I am betting that you mostly blame on males.”
?Huh?
“So how could I be comfortable being a victim…” “…out of concern of that soft blanket of victimhood falling over me. ”
There you go again with the term victim. I don’t get it.
We no longer have a black racial discrimination problem in this country
A friend of mine in Phoenix told me she has repeatedly been called the “n” word. It usually occurs when she is out driving somewhere: a group of 20 something males will roll down their car window and verbally harass her. She moved into her all white neighborhood and invited all her neighbors over for a Super Bowl party. Not one person responded to her invitation, even to just decline. How can you seriously say there is no longer any racism in America when almost every night, you can see an example of it on the news?
“Making the cops the scapegoat and making them stand down in the high crime black neighborhoods…”
I would never expect a cop to stand down in a dangerous situation that would place his/her own life at risk. But did you see the example I mentioned recently, re: the Fresno cop? That is all I expect the cops to do. Use lethal force as a last resort, not first. My dad worked as a cop in Boston and never once discharged his gun.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victim_mentality
Maybe they don’t know her well enough, or just don’t like her enough as a person.
“Maybe they don’t know her well enough…”
Perhaps. But the decent thing to do would be to go over & introduce yourself when the moving van was in front of her home, like my Davis neighbors did when I moved into each home I rented. Also, to go by her home in person to decline her nice invitation. I bet that’s what you, or your wife, would have done, since you strike me as someone who has good social manners.
I brought up these 2 examples (the verbal abuse & the ostracizing) to display what I believe to be racism. Since in your humble opinion it no longer exists. I think it does.
this is a great point. too often we see people saying the problem really is socio-economic not race, but they forget that the racial component is embedded in the socio-economic
Please list each of the races and how their particular component is embedded in the socio-economic. Please site references.
Let me know if you want to have a real discussion.
Now we have “Black Health Matters” protesters winning over hearts and minds of everybody who had their day ruined by their actions.
http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/Emeryville-MLK-Day-Protest-365692551.html
because of course it is more important not to have their day inconvenienced by protesters than protecting the lives of young people victimized by the police.
They’re not going to get anywhere with actions like that. You should hear some of the responses of people who got caught up in the traffic jam. Not good. What if someone was trying to get across the bridge for some kind of emergency? They came across as very foolish looking at most likely hurt whatever their cause is more than help it.
The point isn’t to help your cause, it’s to impress your friends.
There is a whole history of civil disobedience that suggests otherwise, bp
Good point AM, it looks like DP is impressed.
the question is not whether i’m impressed, the question is whether it will be effective.
“Now we have “Black Health Matters” protesters winning over hearts and minds of everybody who had their day ruined by their actions.”
Per Wikipedia:
After some long years of oppression by the Crown leading up to the Revolutionary War those who suffered the insult of the denial of fundamental rights were unwilling to trust the blood spend upon the field of battle which secured liberty to the wiles of any political class which might establish itself in the halls of government. A union of any people ought to be secure in coming together for any common purpose which furthers the general welfare. The Freedom of assembly, sometimes used interchangeably with the freedom of association, is the individual right or ability to come together and collectively express, promote, pursue, and defend their ideas.[1] The right to freedom of association is recognized as a human right, political right and civil liberty.
The United States Constitution explicitly provides for ‘the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances'” in the First Amendment.
Where does it say they have the right to block a bridge or a major freeway artery in order to have the freedom of assembly? Oh that’s right they don’t, it’s against the law.
That is correct, like free speech, free assembly has recognized time and place restrictions.
They are stuck in their new bmw’s on the golden gate or bay bridge for a while. Instead of enjoying a view that most folks in the world travel far and wide to appreciate, they whine about the inconvenience- perhaps their maid in marin will have to hold dinner for a few moments. Maybe she’ll have to re-chill their pinot grigio and place the organic cheese plate and humus appetizer back in the fridge for a few moments. oh, the horror of it all…
And if they miss a flight, they should have planned more time to get to the airport. I give myself two extra hours, just to be safe….
Yep, that’s all I see every time I drive across the bridge, just BMW’s with rich white wine drinking drivers. I never see anyone driving their old ford trying to get to their job so they can feed their family, or to pick their child at some location in the city, or rushing to the hospital with a sick relative, or trying to catch a flight for which they have non-refundable tickets.
The protest stopped traffic for about an hour, but also caused a traffic jam all the way back to Berkeley which caused it to take a few hours for those caught in the snarl to get across the bridge. So if someone was as astute as you had allowed 2 hours they would’ve still been late.
The purpose of civil disobedience is disruption to the normal order of things in order to get the public’s attention on a given issue. I’m not exactly sure what the dispute is here. No one has a right to break a law, but I’m not exactly sure what you propose to do about it. A traffic jam happens all the back to Ashby or University exit in Berkeley every day. I’m sure people missed flights and appointments, on the other hand, how much inconvenience do you think the families of people like Sandra Bland and Oscar Grant have suffered as the result of their deaths? What’s more important? And who is to say?
I see that members of protest groups Black Seed and the Black Queer Liberation Collective took responsibility for the protest.
i’m guessing not your type of groups?
Hey, according to some any group for whatever cause they think they might have should be able to shut down the bridge to protest their pet political point.
Damn be the people that missed their flight or couldn’t pick up their child. They’ll just have to understand because it’s all for the greater good.
You’re missing a key component of civil disobedience – it is illegal to block a bridge. That’s the whole point of it – to get arrested. So given that – what exactly is your point.
Not missing that point at all, just responding to those who think these agitators are some kind of heroes.
Those are two separate issues. One is whether the action is lawful (allowed) and the other is whether I, we, us, support the actions.
the people who are late picking up their child should be used to it by now. My relatives live in San Rafael and are used to it.
btw, Nike headquarters in the Netherlands used to informs all its employees on a daily basis of any labor strikes in Europe. It comes with the territory over there.
I’ve never heard of these groups so I don’t have any opinion about what they advocate. I do think that they may be generating a lot of hostility against themselves by their illegal disruption of traffic.
Since this is an MLK article, it is appropriate to bring up the fact that in his lifetime, MLK himself was a very polarizing figure. He was despised by many and generated a lot of hostility. He lived under a constant threat of death threats. The civil rights movement was disruptive to people’s lives – it probably caused a lot of people to miss planes and appointments. Today most people probably justify it as the ends justifying the means but that is still a fairly subjective justification for it.
Interesting how most of the anonymous Vanguard 10 position themselves to be experts on the criminal justice system as equally or more qualified than Natasha Minsker. I would hate to be the plumber, electrician or contractor called to their homes to fix a problem: all I’d get is second-guessing and a More Informed Opinion on how to get the job done. Is it even possible that someone can know more about a subject than they?
As far as the action on the Bay Bridge goes, if MLK were alive and in Oakland yesterday, he probably would have been on the bridge getting arrested. The inconvenience of travelers is pretty low compared to the inconvenience to someone who is unjustly targeted, injured or killed by law enforcement. Low inconvenience compared to what the families, friends and the wider social network of co-workers, colleagues and employers of people unjustly injured or killed by law enforcement experience when they have to make medical appointments, plan funerals, lose the company and friendship or rearrange life because the victim is no longer present in their lives. Those people on and off the bridge who are angered by the protest are precisely the people that need to get a clue. The good people who pulled this off will incur substantially more inconvenience going to court, reclaiming their towed vehicles, etc. than the people they inconvenienced on the bridge yesterday. Yeah, it was a good and righteous action.
i have only worked in the criminal justice system since the 70s, then again, i agree with natasha.
This is a very interesting point being made by DP.
Did you watch the Sean Penn interview by Charlie Rose on 60 Minutes for the El Chapo event?
Penn, a hard left liberal, clearly was perturbed that Guzman was seen in the press as just a criminal and not a human. Penn clearly wants to make him out as some victim of the American war on drugs.
This is a guy has been responsible for the murder of thousands as Mexico’s top drug lord. Yet Penn is lamenting his treatment by the press and the lack of stories about his “human-ness”.
Fascinating.
This comment by DP and those by Penn take me back to Jonathan Haidt’s work on liberal vs. conservative differences in how we see the world.
Haidt says that political debate is ultimately about our stance on fundamental moral beliefs and group loyalties–things that aren’t usually influenced by facts, figures, or rational policy debate.
He says: “Despite all the individualism and materialism within our culture, our group affiliations matter deeply to most of us. Politics begins to make more sense when you understand it as a tribal phenomenon.”
Haidt also writes: “To begin with, left and right have different understandings of fairness. The left tends to focus on equality, with an emphasis on equality of outcome. In contrast, the right cares exclusively about proportionality of outcome: if outcomes are equalized when deservingness isn’t the same, they consider that an abomination. This is why welfare is such a contentious issue. When social conservatives look at people who might have contributed to their own sorry state, they’re deeply offended by the thought of bailing them out, but on the left, compassion for those who are suffering is more widespread. There’s a basic difference in moral attitude about how each side thinks about “fairness.”
I am trying to understand and be understanding of the views of my friends on the left, but I keep coming back to the conclusion that the liberal impulse is incomplete, wrong and destructive to the whole. It is the heart overriding the head. Making decision that relieve stress and emotional pain versus making optimized hard choices. In fact, I think many liberals start to suspect this growing up and it is why they pursue so much education… to try and get some balance, or to help mask their decision-making deficiencies with copious academic credentials.
Liberals have a tendency to be less capable of compartmentalizing their feelings and thoughts… they both get continually blended, but the feelings are generally dominate.
Distilled down for the topic at hand it is that tendency for liberals to demonstrate that “soft bigotry of low expectations”… but not for those they view as powerful, rich or privileged… for those groups, the bar is set exceedingly high… unless you become a card-carrying liberal, become a member of their tribe, and then you get a pass.
And here exists the key. Despite their claim to be the more independent-minded, nuanced and objective, liberals are highly tribal and debate the world primarily through the black vs. white filters of:
– haves and have-nots,
– rich and poor,
– privileged and oppressed,
– victim and powerful.
Black criminals are not the same as white criminals in a liberal’s mind, because blacks are generally oppressed and less powerful, and whites are generally privileged and powerful.
So it is unfair in a liberal mind to hold both groups to the same performance standard. Liberals will not engage on points that blacks do crime at a much higher rate than whites. That is inconvenient to their myopic impulse to judge on oppression vs. privilege and victim vs. powerful. So crickets happen when this is brought up. It does not feel good to talk about it that way, so they won’t.
But they will get angry if you keep trying to make them talk about it, and then they call you really nasty names.
Bias does not compute in a liberal mind when group outcomes are positive unless the group is considered part of a privileged class and then to contrast unfairness of a group they have decided belongs in a victim class. For example, Asians are over-represented in positive academic outcomes, but liberals won’t even engage on those facts because liberals have not yet put Asians in a privileged class. And as long as Asians as a group continue to vote for Democrats, they will maintain those tribal affiliations with liberals and thus will be safe from being put on liberal’s bad-group-actor list.
Even in those police departments that are majority black, blacks are arrested and convicted in higher numbers. So hence there is the problem of cops being racist and it being a white vs. black issue. Again, this is inconvenient to the liberal impulse of racial fairness and it does not feel good to debate those facts, so now cops become another privileged oppressor group. Another “bad actor” group in the liberal playbook.
Fascinating.
Liberals need to start paying attention to their copious gaps in rational considerations and their dismissal of root-cause analysis over their outcome-based, solutionizing… that are based on tribal group-think and incomplete moral positioning. If we want to truly solve the problems in the black community, we first need to take away the control of the narrative from liberals. Because it is an incomplete, short-sighted, and destructive narrative.
What do conservatives need to start paying attention to? And is everyone either a liberal or a conservative?
Of course not everyone is a liberal or conservative, so if you are not a liberal I wasn’t commenting on you.
What conservatives need to do is to take back the media and the campuses, and explain how the loss of conservative values is contributing to poor community outcomes, and how returning to conservative values is a path to improving community outcomes.
But then Barack Obama pushes more liberal values and issues yet another working-class destructive edict to halt coal mining permits.
Conservatives would have to work very hard to take back the campuses. Their representation in the ranks of advanced degree holders is shallow, to say the least.
In surveys, 44 to 62% of professors self-identify as liberal, only 9 to 18% identify as conservative, possibly the result of physiological differences in the brain making complex and abstract reasoning overly challenging to conservative aspirants. Given your own tendency to cry “bias”, rather than plan and work for a more desired outcome, it seems very unlikely we’ll see a right shift of viewpoints in academia.
Don Shor: What do conservatives need to start paying attention to?
Observer.com, Feb. 2016: Why Asian Americans Don’t Vote Republican
Also interesting graph showing that voting trend over the past 20 years.
Asian Americans as a group have a lot of cultural imprinting for collectivism. As a group they are really weak on understanding American individualism and independence.
And they are also over-represented in the new upper class (like elite white liberals and Jews) that look down on the American working class.
There is nothing to be proud about as an Asian American voting Democrat.
Frankly: Asian Americans as a group have a lot of cultural imprinting for collectivism. As a group they are really weak on understanding American individualism and independence.
It’s like you didn’t really read and fully absorb the point of the article.
If the rest of the conservative political collective thinks as you do, I don’t see much hope.
Well of course I see it a different way. See the man you voted for that was supposed to cover that hope thing?
When you say you don’t see much hope… I think maybe you don’t see very well. But I think you can learn to see better. That is my hope.
Well, now you’re just trolling.
Geez Frankly, I just wonder after reading your screed how much of it was sincere and how much was simply meant to incite. I don’t really feel like you understand my thinking on this subject – I wonder if that’s the fault of me or you.
It was sincere but meant to be provocative. And I knew it would cause heat… hopefully a similar level that burns in me every time I read the same tired old liberal social justice BS about race relations, and race and law enforcement. Somebody needs to call out that BS and replace the tired old social justice crusade with a new model that will actually improve things.
I want things to improve. I want solutions.
Nothing… absolutely nothing coming out of these silly Kumbaya events will help improve things or create solutions. It only serves to advance a liberal political agenda while helping the liberal tribe feel better.
You say you want things to improve and you want solutions, but it seems like you’re supporting the same policies that have helped to get us to this point.
Frankly
“Nothing… absolutely nothing coming out of these silly Kumbaya events will help improve things or create solutions.”
I am quite sure that there are many, especially, but certainly not exclusively in the south who would have said the same about the small gatherings of activists who wanted to raise awareness of inequalities between how the races were treated in MLK’s day. I see the value of these kinds of events very differently from you, so I will share what I saw as I was walking downtown shortly after the event.
A short distance from the Varsity, I ran into two of David’s children. His oldest boy told me with pride that they had just come from the march. He is learning first hand about the experiences of others, how others see their lives put into a historical perspective from both people who look like him as well as those who do not. He is seeing the value of listening and sharing his experiences with folks of both similar and foreign experiences.
Our community offers many ways to celebrate events that are of importance to us historically and culturally. We share the 4th of July and celebrate it as a community. In the winter we have a tree lighting ceremony and event to showcase our young musicians in the E Street Plaza as our annual Christmas celebration. These are community building and celebrating events.
I find it quite telling that you belittle a community event designed to honor an individual whose awareness building works both great and small helped to change our entire society’s blatant discriminatory behavior towards an entire race. Maybe I should no longer be surprised by the depths of your willingness to deride the firmly held principles of others, but you continue to amaze me.
Frankly: “Kumbaya” has been used to refer to artificially covering up deep-seated disagreements. However, assuming your referring to Ms. Minsker’s speech, I think the opposite is the case. She’s not covering up deep-seated disagreements, she’s highlighting them.
Why disparage folks’ emotions? In so many words, you’ve repeatedly stated you don’t like anyone discussing their feelings. It’s okay for you to shield your feelings, but IMHO it’s very healthy to express ones’ elation, grief, humour, anger, frustration, confusion, sadness, shame, and even apathy.
Thanks sisterhood. I completely agree with this up to the point that the sharing of emotions becomes a placebo for the difficult choices we must make and actions we must take.
Take the clown backstage having a breakdown over stage-fright getting hugs of empathy from the other performers in the circus. The clown feels loved and feels understood, but the show still must go on.
To respond to David’s comment below that I supporting the same policies that have helped get us to this point. There is where he is absolutely missing the point. Read “get us to this point”. This is the telling bit. David and a lot of social justice liberals have picked up this narrative that law enforcement and the judicial system have CAUSED all the crappy circumstances in the black community. Let’s put aside for the moment the fact that their demands would result in a lot more crime and hence a lot more harm to lots of innocent and law-abiding people. The real problem with this direction and approach is that it will do NOTHING to help the very people the social justice liberals are obsessed with caring for. Because law enforcement and the judicial did not get us to this point. The over-representation of blacks in crime and punishment is the result of law enforcement and judicial standard being applied largely equally (the media and political attention paid to ONLY the cop-vs-black encounters artificially inflates the public perception that cops are racist), but the culture and behaviors in the black community fall below the standards for almost every other community.
That is the root-cause of the problem. The black community is over-represented in behavior that results in more stops, more arrests, more convictions and more prison time.
Drug use, but more specifically drug trade, are key areas of misbehavior.
The break down in human and social capital in the black community is the general root cause. The children born out of wedlock. The young men growing up without fathers. The crappy school systems. The lack of job opportunities. The reduction in the number of churches and congregations. All those missing human and social network connections that result in a lack of human, economic and social development.
The urban black culture is a mess of hip-hop gansta. Kids get beat up for getting good grades. Violence is accepted and even honored. Gun violence is mostly committed by blacks and mostly against other blacks.
Serious education reform combined with targeted economic development and welfare reform are all needed to start fixing the problems. In addition, there is a need for black leadership that is a moral leadership, not race-pimping and race-baiting for political and monetary gain. Unfortunately social justice liberals give these shysters a voice and power to continue to keep the same narrative rolling that prevents dialog that will lead to real solutions. It is in their best interest to keep it rolling. What will the race-baiter and race-obsessed social justice liberal do if the narrative changes!?
We should look at our black urban areas like we did Fallujah during the Iraq war Surge. They need to be rebuilt from the ground up. And this time we should not pull out until the job is done.
But while we are doing this we need to INCREASE law enforcement rather than cause the police to stand down. There is a percentage of black youth that is just lost. They cannot be rehabilitated. They are angry, violent and lacking enough of a moral compass for society to accept the risks they pose to others. Of course it is not just black youth that are lost, but they are certainly over-represented. We have no choice but to use law enforcement and the judicial to keep all of these trouble-makers and potential trouble-makers contained. The time is now to focus on the very young so that we can fix the problems in a generation or two.
I have empathy. I am saddened. But I am a problem solver and am quick to recognize when the direction is focusing on symptoms and not root causes.
Well stated Frankly. I’m sure you will get lambasted for speaking these inconvenient truths but I think deep down even liberals have to admit you’re right in your assertions.
Yes! This is where the focus should be if our society wants to improve life for future generations. The focus should be on things like motivating unmarried, poorly educated, impoverished girls to put off having children that they don’t want and can’t raise. For those kids who are growing up in poverty and neglect we need much more efforts to encourage organizations like Big Brothers/Big Sisters to provide guidance for neglected youth. There is also a place for programs such as Head Start which can identify at risk youth and get them headed in a positive direction.
Frankly
“when deservingness isn’t the same, they consider that an abomination”
I considered countering point by point, but then decided that there was only one phrase worth addressing. You characterized the above as being representative of conservative thought, and I agree. The problem is that conservatives truly believe that only they can make an accurate determination of “deservingness”. If someone has not had the upbringing, or chances, or connections or opportunities to rise above their situation in life, and if that situation has not enabled them to achieve appreciable wealth or power, then they are clearly not “deserving”.
You have made a major error in characterizing the thought processes of at least this liberal. It is not equality of outcome that is important to me, it is equality of opportunity, and in that, as a society, we are truly rich. Look at Tamir Rice. His only crime was being a black male, large for his age, growing up in a “bad neighborhood” all of which was used to justify his killing. He certainly did not have equal opportunity as my son who also liked to play with his projectile shooters. Was my son “more deserving” in your eyes ?
Tia – Thank for helping to reinforce my points.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/08/06/an-unarmed-white-teen-was-shot-dead-by-police-his-family-asks-where-is-the-outrage/
http://downtrend.com/71superb/black-cop-shoots-and-kills-6-year-old-white-boy-with-autism
https://www.policeone.com/officer-shootings/articles/1283535-Youth-brandishing-toy-gun-fatally-shot-by-Ark-officer/
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/apr/21/police-kill-more-whites-than-blacks-but-minority-d/?page=all
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/georgia-teen-holding-wii-remote-shot-cops-front-door-family-lawyer-article-1.1619842
Frankly
And thank you for bringing up another issue that I think that we need to address. The number of times that individuals regardless of race who are shot and killed by police and/or others when resort to some other modality rather than our readily accessible and highly lethal guns would have been more appropriate to the situation.
Being able to site non racially related deaths and injuries no more invalidates the idea of disproportionate impact and has no more validity than my posting pictures of victims of prostate cancer at a rally to raise resources for breast cancer and saying “where’s the funding for prostate cancer” ? Obviously both need to be addressed and we should be collaborating rather than belittling the efforts of the other.
“victim and powerful”
Frankly, perhaps your over-use of the word victim is why I have come to abhor it and prefer the word “survivor.”
It seems like anytime you disagree with a reader, you bring up “victim mentality”. Then you don’t have to have to address the issue or have any empathy for someone who has been mistreated, you can just label them.
“Penn clearly wants to make him out as some victim of the American war on drugs”
Not at all, from the 2 interviews I’ve seen. Fascinating how you & I can watch the exact same show & have such reactions. I took away that Penn wanted to bring attention to the failure of the war on drugs, and our failure to rehabilitate drug addicts.
Its too bad some of you missed the MLK program at the Varsity. It was by far the best program in the event’s over 20 year history.
Instead we get disparagement of a speaker for how she makes her living. Of course the entire justice system of police, prosecutors, judges, parole officers and prison guards all make their living off of the current system as well. Then when it comes to reform these same beneficiaries are some of the most powerful lobbyists against change. Yet I don’t see you do anything but defend these same advocates of the status quo. I don’t ever see you raise the issue of how they make their living.
As for protests in the bay area, they often do stupid stuff but all social movements are two step forward one step back affairs. I won’t defend such actions but on the other hand why is it that the same people here always seize upon the worst events to condemn entire social movements? Its sad that some of you look for whatever failure you can find in an attempt to discredit people of goodwill who have nothing to do with these elements and sincerely want to help people have better lives.
I completely agree – it was the best program since I’ve been involved (and I wasn’t part of the planning this year).
frankly:
“Haidt says that political debate is ultimately about our stance on fundamental moral beliefs and group loyalties–things that aren’t usually influenced by facts, figures, or rational policy debate.”
i agree with this statement, but you seem to believe it is endemic to one side or the other of the political divide, whereas i see it as endemic to both sides and the most extreme people go, the less they are ruled by logic and reason. you can’t tell me that trump isn’t appealing to visceral anger for example.
you are not doing a good job of understanding the views of your friends on the left. you argue that the left has the ” tendency to be less capable of compartmentalizing their feelings and thoughts… they both get continually blended, but the feelings are generally dominate.”
instead what i see is a system that has been as ms. minsker stated literally created on racial hegemony by white male individuals. that hegemony has transformed and mutated over time, but each time there has been progressive change – end of slavery for example, it has been reestablished in a different form – jim crow.
where ms. minsker was brilliant in my view has been that she recognized where ses has become a proxy for race. why is that important? because people want to argue things are about ses now, not race. the problem with the new jim crow is the legal system is being used to continue jim crow hegemony and subjugation. it’s not that the system is not racist, it’s simply that it has caught up many poor whites into the fold.
“Black criminals are not the same as white criminals in a liberal’s mind, because blacks are generally oppressed and less powerful, and whites are generally privileged and powerful.”
i disagree. in my mind, white criminals, many of whom i have represented have many of the same obstacles as black criminals. but there is an additional challenge of blacks that whites do not face. every step along the way, whites are advantaged, even when they are poor and uneducated.
i’ll dissemble more later today.
Frankly
“ David and a lot of social justice liberals have picked up this narrative that law enforcement and the judicial system have CAUSED all the crappy circumstances in the black community.”
Again, I would recommend caution in the use of the the word “all”. I do not know any liberals…and I do know many who believe that “all” societal problems of the black community are caused by law enforcement and the judicial system. However, I do know many who do see these systems as contributing to the problems faced by these communities in some ways, while helping in others. I would further state that the liberals that I know tend to take a more nuanced view of the situation than you tend to portray here on the Vanguard.
No one has said that the law enforcement and judicial system has “caused” “all” of the crappy circumstances. Find me a quote to the contrary.
“Asian Americans as a group have a lot of cultural imprinting for collectivism. As a group they are really weak on understanding American individualism and independence.
And they are also over-represented in the new upper class (like elite white liberals and Jews) that look down on the American working class.
There is nothing to be proud about as an Asian American voting Democrat.”
What an offensive post from an offensive POSter. Hope you lose business over it.
bidden: What an offensive post from an offensive poster.
Definitely agree. If these comments represent conventional Republican conservativism today, then I definitely understand why it is failing to appeal to voters in national elections. If you work hard and diligently and succeed, then one is identified as elite and undeserving of admiration. In those comments instead there is a strong element of belief in having pedigree of culture and values to have true legitimacy of being American.