Two brief thoughts on Ferguson

[drwex]

Lots of people have written lots of interesting (and heartening and depressing and insightful) things. Here are two thoughts I have:

1. I do not care if the boy who was shot was "one of the good ones." That phrase offends me, because there's an implication that some boys somehow deserve to be (or we are OK if they get) gunned down by police while unarmed. Yes, it's sad that this boy was initially portrayed as some kind of gangster or hoodlum and that speaks volumes about our racist societal assumptions. But you know what? I don't care. I don't care if he was a gang-banger, or a shoplifter, or a college-bound nice kid. The undisputed fact is that an unarmed civilian was shot multiple times in what I would probably call execution style. That is just wrong.

2. The role of "the State" is way more complicated than most commentators are willing to acknowledge. Local authorities were clearly out of control, clearly overreacting, clearly over-militarized. But local authorities are also the ones who are most likely to have local residents on the force. They're the ones most likely to be known to the citizenry. It's said that the residents of Ferguson know who the shooter cop is, even though authorities won't name him. That's because the residents see those local cops day in and day out. If the State - in the person of the local police - has racist or soured relationships with the community only those local authorities can fix it.

The situation appears to have been calmed by the introduction of Missouri State-level police, who replaced the local and county authorities. That's good - the State here served a positive role. But at the same time, State governments often have much more racist and much more regressive policies than local authorities. States, particularly in the South, were the most vocal and effective opponents of integration and other attempts to improve racial justice. States all over the US today continue to impose measures such as gerrymandering and ID restrictions that isolate, disenfranchise, and disempower voters who are poor or black- and brown-skinned.

The Federal government, as noted above, has played a major role in promoting and enforcing civil rights legislation. It has established a dual justice system where people - especially those of color - who have been denied their rights in lower or state courts can bring Federal civil rights actions to redress their grievances. The Feds have consistently taken certain states to court in an attempt to maintain equal access to the ballot box, to housing, etc. But at the same time it is the Federal government that promotes and pays for the arms race that has turned local police forces into paramilitary units. The Feds, and their post-9/11 paranoia, bought tanks and drones and sniper rifles and overpowered SWAT teams to the streets of hometown America.

Anyone who thinks this issue is a simple one when talking about the role of "the State" is missing the point, I think.

Comments

[badseed1980.livejournal.com]

Yep. Pretty much exactly my thoughts.

[chienne-folle.livejournal.com]

Thanks, as always, for your thoughtful analysis of the situation.

The whole thing makes me sick at heart, and if *I* feel sick at heart, I can't even imagine what my African-American friends are feeling. I keep hoping the country has learned better, has finally learned to see fellow human beings AS fellow human beings and not as Other, but stuff like this keeps ripping that hope away.

[tamidon.livejournal.com]

one thing to add to this: the local police force is overwhelmingly white while the population of Ferguson is mainly African-American. The guy they brought in from the State Highway Police is from Ferguson, where he had no chance of making the force because he is , himself, African-American.This complicates the view that local cops are more lkely to be part of the community because apparently in this community they aren't.

[aelf.livejournal.com]

He might have been able to join the local police force if he'd wanted to. I hadn't read that non-whites were deliberately kept from being on the police force. I'm not sure it's fair (to anyone) to make that assumption.

My mom lived in Ferguson for a couple years when she was in HS, so 50 years ago, and it was a mostly white community then. It does not surprise me that a community that has been transitioning from majority white to majority black still has majority white players in the power positions. I'm not sure we should assume the majority white police force in Ferguson is composed mostly of police not-from-Ferguson given the transition the place has been undergoing.

(My mom hasn't been back, and now understands why the people organizing her 50 yr reunion didn't live in Ferguson, but in surrounding communities.)

All that said, I think it showed wisdom to bring in someone who wasn't part of that police force, and who was from Ferguson. I think the powers that be were lucky to have someone who fit that position, and that he's been doing such an excellent job of trying to calm people and provide information to them.

[c1.livejournal.com]

I do not care if the boy who was shot was "one of the good ones." That phrase offends me, because there's an implication that some boys somehow deserve to be (or we are OK if they get) gunned down by police while unarmed.

Define "unarmed". If your definition doesn't include parity in terms of size/weight/physical strength/numbers/etc, then it's an incomplete definition. It's legally defensible for an able bodied (wo)man to shoot (assume self defense here) an unarmed (wo)man, if the assailant(s) is/are larger/stronger/obviously more skilled in fighting. Or put another way, Mike Tyson is bearing down on someone with just his fists. A mob of people is bearing down on a physically fit person.
We don't know who the cop is, and I've not seen pictures of the kid, beyond the yearbook photo. But it was two kids against one cop. As I recall, there's no video of what happened, and it's already come out that the kid was a robbery suspect -- a far cry from the innocent kid the locals are making him out to be -- so I'm not convinced eyewitness testimony is going to be reliable. Too many people have agendas here and there's a dearth of dispassionate evidence indicating one thing or another.
As you said, the story is complicated.

States all over the US today continue to impose measures such as gerrymandering

I can't read this and not point out that the Bay State is amongst the worst when it comes to engineering voting districts. There is no way to look at Barney Frank's old district without coming to that conclusion, and the new maps are no better -- in fact, probably worse.

[drwex]

Yeah, I know that things are messed up in Ferguson. But the entire theory of "community policing" is based on the idea of assigning cops to work in or near their home towns. Statistically, that's true across the country.

[drwex]

I do not buy your sophism. Part of the point of training such as police should get (and is certainly part of almost every martial art I've ever seen) is techniques for dealing with disparities in size, weight, reach, etc. If I am faced off against a linebacker with no weapons in hand and I have body armor and a sidearm then I think most reasonable people would consider my opponent unarmed.

Indeed, I'm aware that many northern states, including MA, have horribly gerrymandered districts. To my knowledge the arrangement in MA has not been used to disadvantage of people of color, which was my point. If you have some other point to add, feel free to clarify.

[mrf-arch.livejournal.com]

The Bay State in fact invented the first Gerry-mander, which snaked it s way from Chelsea to Salisbury, via Andover. It was a bad idea then, and it's a bad idea now. And saying, "Massachusetts did that too" in response to a statement about how it is happening across the country seems more like an attempted derailment than a positive contribution.

[mrf-arch.livejournal.com]

Bull Connor, the man who to this day is perhaps the most well known avatar of the opposition to the Civil Rights movement, was never a state level official - he was a city commissioner for the city of Birmingham. Local and regional officials can be, and with some regularity are, even more overtly racist than their state and federal counterparts.

[drwex]

I see your Bull Connor and raise you one George Wallace and one Orval E. Faubus (governor of Arkansas). I think this is also beside the point, though.

[gothtique.livejournal.com]

When we thought mpero was moving to St. Louis I read up quite a bit on the neighborhoods and demographics.
The population of the city is highly polarized. I don't remember the date, but for a long time, if you were black you couldn't own property in the City... and since the 1950 census the white population has fled in droves to the suburbs.

Looking at the Wiki page for the City of St Louis shows CLEARLY how divided the city is.

I am HOPING that the state cops will be more help than harm.

What is sad is that the death of Robin Williams got MUCH more play than this story this last week.
I know I talked to a number of people who had no idea that there was anything going on, hadn't heard a thing about it!

[c1.livejournal.com]

You're right that training exists on how to deal with disparities in size. However, no training, either in police techniques or martial art, will ever equip a person to deal with every scenario. If it were the case, cops would never need to call for backup. Resisting arrest would never result in a cop going to the ER. No perp would ever manage to slip the cop's bonds. It's irrational to believe otherwise when things like that happen in America on a daily basis. That's not sophism, that's reality.

I could go on at length about how people of non/colour and socio-economic station reap benefit or are maligned on a daily basis in MA. I've visited schools in Boston that are chronically under-resourced, and been instructed by the teacher in the classroom to be careful around students, because yes, they occasionally lash out at teachers, and frequently steal from them. I've been told stories on stories of how teachers have to fight for their jobs and budgets, because their very *departments* were in danger of elimination. Do you not hear the stories of how parents struggle to get their kids into "the good schools" in their cities -- what's going on there, and why do "the bad schools" tend to be in communities of color?
Look at how voting lines are drawn, look at who lives in what communities. Then tell me that gerrymandering in MA isn't done to the detriment of people of color. MA is just as racist as everywhere else in America. It's just by dint of luck that things haven't exploded around here.

[drwex]

Your comments continue to read like distractions. Yes, it's true that no amount of physical training prepares a person to deal with every opponent. So what? How is that relevant to the case at hand?

Yes, there are disadvantaged schools and underfunded ones in and around Boston. Also Lowell and many other towns and cities in MA. Again, how is that relevant to the issue at hand? You're making points no one disputes as though they were somehow counter to the points I'm trying to make and I fail to see how they are at all on point.

[mizarchivist]

::pebble::